Harry's Blog

If you're considering ever investing in a NetGear WG111T USB wireless adapter let me just give you one word of advice, don't do it. Really, the thing is an absolute piece of junk. The NetGear forum is full of disgruntled customers wondering why the little wireless dongle doesn't work as advertised.

Firstly the manual bears no resemblance to the way it works, apparently there should be a solid light when connected. Well that doesn't happen, it flashes on and off in a very distracting manner all the time. But more seriously is that it is prone to very frequent disconnections from the wireless network. And you can't reconnect, something happens to the damn thing that requires you to reboot the PC.

Thankfully not all NetGear stuff is rubbish, I'm very happy with the DG834T wireless modem router that I got for a sale price at PC World. And thankfully I didn't pay for the WG111T as it was part of the deal package. But it has lead to a lot of hair pulling as the net connection would die when I was in the middle of something important.

So having had enough of this nonsense I picked up a cheapo Belkin PCI wireless network card yesterday. It works a treat. Or at least it did after several hours. Believe me, wireless networking isn't the easiest thing in the world because it seems to make any computer knowledge you have redundant and instead make you just try wild guesses.

Thankfully after two hours my wild guesses paid off. But due to my own stupidity I fiddled with some settings and it was another hour before I got everything working again. I'm now happy to report that since the PC was switched on this morning it has remained connected to the NetGear router in the other room.