Lousy in all ways possible

My mother's laptop never had good connectivity with the original Netgear 802.11b card. And since she has a G network, I got her a version 2 of the Netgear WG511 card.

Previously, I've had problems with a netgear router. The infamous WGR624, now being given away free with purchases of roach spray at drugstores. I didn't think about that when I purchased the card because I've had other netgear cards and had no trouble with them, thus I figured cards were a safe purchase. I figured the quality issue was only in the routers.

My mistake. My very BIG mistake. The card didn't connect very well even though it showed very strong signals. Worse, the driver kept taking up more and more of hte CPU time as the computer ran. Then the computer crashed hard if run for more than a couple of hours. Finally, the card and driver (the latest one downloadable from the Netgear website) managed to corrupt something in Windows so that the computer froze on startup. To fix this, I had to reformat and reinstall Windows (98se) and reinstall all the software once again.

The fault seems to be in the easy-to-use monitor program which sits in the system tray. I know this because when you close the program, the problems vanish but the computer is still connected to the router. I don't know what the problem is, and I don't care. The bugs in this are quite severe. We aren't talking about occasional slowdowns or annoying popups - we are talking about problems that turn your laptop into a paperweight. And my previous experience with their tech support is sufficient to know that calling them is just a waste of my time.

Bad routers, bad tech support, bad customer support and now bad network cards. Netgear now joins my very short list of companies I will never do business with again under any circumstances. Doing everything by the book and installing the latest drivers and programs was not enough to keep this card from ruining a laptop and causing me days of work.

Not to mention the embarrassment of breaking your mother's computer. She is beginning to wonder if I slept through engineering school.