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Strengths: Small size - good for case airflow, short antenna, simple installation, works under XP and Linux.
Weaknesses: Not as sensible as other wireless cards.
Summary: 2007-05-13 20:24:59 I got this card today after reading a lot of negative (and also some positive) reports from other users. I needed a simple card for occasional work with Windows, found this one for $8 on sale and decided to give it a try. It works fine, the installation is straightforward, Windows XP recognized it right away and installed a driver from the supplied CD. No problems with the installation and establishing a WEP-encrypted connection with the router. My computer is located in the same room with a Linksys wireless router, about 15' apart from it in a wooden table drawer in a corner of the room. I am the only obstacle on the straight line between the antennas. My router has a third-party long antennas, about twice longer than the original ones (I do not remember the gain guaranteed by those antennas). The reported by Windows strength of the signal for this card is flipping between 3 and 4 bars, which drops the communication speed. A similar complain is reported by other people. Maybe it is partially due to a relatively short antenna of this card. I remember getting 5 bars by using a Linksys wireless adapter in a similar setting. So, if you are serious network user, this card is probably not for you. I am, however, satisfied since I got a cheap card for testing and experiments.
Update added two months later: I am still happy with this card, it works very stable under 32-bit Windows XP. Today I experimented with it under openSuSE Linux 10.2. Installation is easy with ndiswrapper but there is no direct drivers for Linux for Marvell chips yet. However, no slowdown is noticeable with my 256 Kbps Internet connection. The card does its job pretty good.
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