pc cards

SMC makes the sorriest cards I've ever used. I bought a wireless card for my PC and one for my laptop. They worked fine at first, but after months of heavy use both of the cards stop working. I'll never buy a SMC product again.

I purchased this card and an SCM router as a package. I got home installed the router and all was great. I then installed the PCI card into my wife's computer running XP SP2. I used the default drivers that came on the driver disk. The card worked pretty well, but it kept loosing the connection to the router. The router is on the 2nd floor about 30 feet away, if you go through the floor. One evening I downloaded the drivers to update the card from SMC's web site. I ran the install util and updated the drivers. After that XP networking died. I could ping devices, but I could not connect to them. I was not able to surf the web, check email or anything related to the internet. My other computer could connect and surf just fine so I know it was not the router having problems. To make along story short I had to use XP restore to get the machine back. After several emails with SMC tech support they informed me that they SMC utility that you use to configure the card is not totally compatible with XP. I was told to use the built in XP wireless config util. I did this and it did work but the problem with the wireless card dropping out continued. It got to the point so being so bad that I went back to using a hardwired cable running from up stairs to down stairs. At this point I am going to pull the card out and sell it. I have check SMC's website hoping for an update, but as of today no other updates have been posted.

Save yourself and don't buy this card. Either the card or it's software messed up my brand new Dell. The card had a hard time keeping a connection less than 15 feet.