Netgear WNDA3100 Wireless N Network Adapter Recert Review

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(More customer reviews)I installed 4 of these yesterday. They are V1 adapters. They ship with an extension USB cable, some vecro and a clear plastic holder to mount it on a wall, etc. All 4 of my machines run XP Pro SP3. Windows found the device but did not recognize it until I installed the current drivers - 3.0.0.2 - that I downloaded from the netgear site [...]
On 2 of my machines the installation was a snap. Unplugged the adapter, started the installer program and it stepped me right through the installation. There's a point where you have plugged the adapter in and you are prompted to either have the Wizard step you through defining the connection to your router or manually define the connection yourself. I am very familiar with the netgear utility so on 3 of the machines I did it manually. Just for snicks I used the wizard on the 3rd machine and the only tricky part was that since I don't broadcast my ssid, you need to select the connection at the bottom of the list with a blank ssid and then you are prompted for your ssid. This is not very intuitive for beginners.
On 2 of my machines the installer kept failing. Probably due to some software conflict. On these machines I did clean boots by using msconfig to boot without non-windows services and no *.ini files. At this point the installers installed OK after a couple of tries. After rebooting these two machines I got BSOD's on both machines. I powered down each machine and powered back up. No further BSOD's on either machine.
Speed on all machines is very good. Getting very snappy response off of these with my dlink dir-655 router.
All-in-all very good adapter, even if the netgear drivers can be finicky. My dir-655 isn't dual band, but when I upgrade these will be ready. I tried to use Windows to manage the adapter on one of the machines that I was having some trouble with, and I couln't get WPA+AES to work. Didn't really try to troubleshoot it, as I am using the netgear software to manage the profiles.
I should add that the MAC ADDRESS and SERIAL NUMBER are both blacked out with a permanent marker. Not sure why unless this is the way netgear determines it's a refurb. Also, it's a little large and if you don't use the cable, it may not allow you to put another USB device in an adjacent USB slot. Of course the cable solves that problem.
One of the pictures on this site shows it in a Netgear Box, with CD and instructions. Mine came in a generic brown box without the media or instructions... the swr and guides are available at the netgear site.

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Netgear's efficient WNDA3100 RangeMax Wireless N Network Adapter (Recertified) is your doorway to a world of wireless applications.You can now effortlessly surf the web, e-mail, stream HD video, play online games, and make Internet calls when you use your new RangeMax dual band wireless-N USB 2.0 adapter.Your network will achieve faster speeds (up to 15X) and greater coverage (up to 10X) than other USB wireless-N adapter, while avoiding interference.