Review: LINKSKEY LKW-G553 IEEE 802.11b/g 32bit PCI Wireless Card

I purchased two wireless adapters recently to get two PC's I had lying around online. I finally got around to installing them and had mixed results. I got them from NewEgg at a decent price. No complaint so far. One of the reasons I bought was that it advertised as compatible with both Windows 2000 and ME which was what I needed it for.

Windows 2000 Professional: My first installation was pretty much simple as installations go. First you install software and drivers. Shut the machine down. Install wireless card. Reboot PC. Once machine is booted up configure your wireless connection. I was online in about fifteen minutes. I was a happy camper.

Windows ME: This one didn't go as well. Well when I went to install software it said it couldn't find the software drivers for my OS. On top of that the error message had obvious misspellings which I thought was odd and sloppy proofreading on the vendors part. I even tried downloading software from the LinksKey website when I reinstalled it did install a driver but it failed to work properly. When checking the properties I got a pretty much a useless code 10 error which didn't go into much detail. I'd click on the configuration software and the tabs needed to connect to my router were not working. After a short while I just took out the machine. I may or may not try at a later date. I just may put it in a different machine altogether.

Comments: Though I was happy it worked in one machine I wasn't happy with the other. Although with some searching and configuring I may be able to get this to work with my Windows ME machine. I don't think it should be this hard to install when it was advertised to work in this OS(Windows ME). I don't think the average consumer has time to fool with tech support for something that was advertised to work out of the box. Also the misspelled words on the error message I thought was a bit amateurish. To be honest I'll be avoiding this one in the future even if I have to spend a little more. Sometimes you just get what you pay for. Just my two cents.