flame: Netgear MA111 USB

to those who may be considering purchasing this item for a wireless network
connection, my experience is it's a piece of junk. Spend a bit more and get
a PCI card/PCMCIA card combo, it will cause you less aggro in the wrong run.
I've just spent 10 hours trying to get this thing to work on a Win98 PC -
finally got it to work, but the software always causes lockup whenever the
software is shut down, which includes shutting down the computer. The
support staff are in bombay somewhere and speak very bad english. The
drivers on the CD cause lockup as soon as the PC starts, and the later
drivers from Netgear's website cause lockup on shutdown. I've gone to great
lengths to cut down the startup items to minimise conflicts, had to
re-install windows, reboot into safe mode many times and still it won't work
properly.
I've noticed this kind of poor quality with netgear stuff in general. I
think they're a 'cheap and nasty' outfit.

To all those out there who have had better experiences with netgear,
salutations to you and well done.

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 26 Nov
2003 12:29:00 -0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk "net"
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>I've noticed this kind of poor quality with netgear stuff in general. I
>think they're a 'cheap and nasty' outfit.
>
>To all those out there who have had better experiences with netgear,
>salutations to you and well done.

Well, I'm one. We have 15 MA111 adapters at work, and have used them with XP
Pro, XP Home, 98SE, ME and SuSE 9 without problems.

deKay
--
+ Lofi Gaming - www.lofi-gaming.org.uk
|- ugvm Magazine - www.ugvm.org.uk
|- My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
|- HENSHIN-A-GOGO, BABY!

"net" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:3fc49cbc@212.67.96.135...
> to those who may be considering purchasing this item for a wireless
network
> connection, my experience is it's a piece of junk. Spend a bit more and
get
> a PCI card/PCMCIA card combo, it will cause you less aggro in the wrong
run.
> I've just spent 10 hours trying to get this thing to work on a Win98 PC -
> finally got it to work, but the software always causes lockup whenever the
> software is shut down, which includes shutting down the computer. The
> support staff are in bombay somewhere and speak very bad english. The
> drivers on the CD cause lockup as soon as the PC starts, and the later
> drivers from Netgear's website cause lockup on shutdown. I've gone to
great
> lengths to cut down the startup items to minimise conflicts, had to
> re-install windows, reboot into safe mode many times and still it won't
work
> properly.
> I've noticed this kind of poor quality with netgear stuff in general. I
> think they're a 'cheap and nasty' outfit.
>
> To all those out there who have had better experiences with netgear,
> salutations to you and well done.
>
I've had no issues with netgear products (got 5 of them in my home) - I have
had loads of problems with win98 and usb - 98se was better but still not
great. At work we have just got a new digi cam that will not work with
win98 and the suggested fix was to buy a card reader!

I think for most manufacturers putting effort into a 5 year old os (which is
no longer supported by Microsoft) just costs too much.

> I've noticed this kind of poor quality with netgear stuff in general. I
> think they're a 'cheap and nasty' outfit.
Amen to that.

Here's my problem:
Has anyone else spotted the glaring error in the Netgear DG814 router/modem
filtering?
If you enter certain long web addresses into the filtering list, eventually
(I'm guessing here) the firmware program is overwritten and you can no
longer access the router via the web browser, the internet is dropped and it
will fail to reload its own firmware from the backup when you do a factory
reset.
You can tell things are about to fold because the entries higher in the
list(not the ones you have just added) are corrupted.

I have had 3 of these do exactly that....(

The 3rd I rescued before it went belly up by reloading the saved setting
from disk (only had 2 short keywords) and chopping the new filtering
keywords to very short ones.

This is running the very latest firmware from Netgears website.
I suspect I am not the first to have hit this fault and I think Netgear
should get their software engineers to fix this and release the new
firmware, may take some of the load off their allready overloaded helpdesk.
I like the Netgear kit but I hate their support team in India that read off
a script and I dislike the long delays in returning my emails.

Ohh and now number 3 has gone tits up me...(

I have ordered a DG834 (DG814 is now obsolete, oh I wonder why??), hope they
employed a programmer with more than one brain cell to program this one.

I have used Netgear wireless gear in the past and the range was crap, better
off with the new Dlink DWL700.
Their 24/7 support is the worst, I was on the phone last night for over one
hour and still waiting in the queue so I gave up.
Its easier to return the faulty stuff to the supplier and get it refunded
(ebuyer).

Cheers

Rob King

"net" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<3fc49cbc@212.67.96.135>...
> to those who may be considering purchasing this item for a wireless network
> connection, my experience is it's a piece of junk.

> I've noticed this kind of poor quality with netgear stuff in general. I
> think they're a 'cheap and nasty' outfit.

I'm reasonably happy with Netgear products though I must admit to
having to return TWO WiFi PC cards due to them reporting incorrect MAC
addresses.

Cards worked OK but the MAC address problem made me unable to use the
MAC security.

Geoff Lane