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easy to install and has great reception and is very reliable, for the price this is a great deal.
Put it in, turned on PC, and it works- signal strength is excellent, and no issues or problems with Linux (Ubuntu 9.10). Should have read the reviews, as three other cards did not work at all, or had driver problems.
The Ralink Wireless Configuration Utility, designed for use with this card, requires me to re-enter my WPA2 password every time in order to reactivate the connection. My PC is located less than 6 feet from my wireless router (an Apple AirPort Express). Yet my connection with this card seems to drop about every 15 minutes. This is a major waste of time.I expect occasional wi-fi dropouts, but it's surprising when it happens at such a short range, and it's maddening to have to re-enter my password every time. At the very least, the software should be able to save my password in a keychain.
I was replacing a very old and slow DSL 802.11b wireless system with a cable wireless 802.11g system and needed to upgrade my two oldest desktop Macs(a 867-Mhz Quicksilver and a dual 1-Ghz MDD) that had been using Apple's original 802.11b Airport cards. If you want an 802.11b,g card that is recognized by Apple's Airport software, you'll need to look elsewhere and pay a much higher price. Prior to software installation, the Airport card was removed and the PCI card installed.
The card does ship with a mini-CD that includes Ralink drivers for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The cards have worked flawlessly on both G4s (10.4.11) during the month they've been in use. This Sabrent PCI-G802 card was the least expensive b & g PCI card (under $20) that had any mention of Mac compatibility, so I figured it was worth a shot.
The Ralink wireless utility scanned for all the local wireless networks and it took just a couple of minutes to figure out the setup for my secured network. However, there were no installation instructions for the Mac, so this might be an issue for people not comfortable in setting up a wireless network. I noted that a newer version of the Ralink driver (compatible with OS 10.3, 10.4, 10.5) was available on the Ralink website ([.].), which I downloaded and installed.
I was concerned about how they would perform when putting the G4's to sleep or bringing them out of sleep (this was a well-known problem with many USB 2.0 PCI cards for the Mac); however, there has to date not been any sleep-related problems despite multiple sleep periods each day. Otherwise, this is a steal.
The box and online product description says it is "windows/linux/mac" - tried two PCI-G802 cards and neither worked in my Mac.
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