Pros: Trouble free installation and setup when used with Netgear WNDR3700 router. Works great. Looks brand new. Gives WPA2-PSK encryption on 1999 Sony Vaio notebook! (until now, I could only get WEP to work)

Cons: Minor issues: If plugged directly into PC USB port, it protrudes more than a CardBus (PC Card style) adapter. The status LEDs are incredibly bright. I applied a paper label to dim it to acceptable level. Would be nice if LED could be turned off to minimize battery depletion.

Overall Review: This challenging install works fine: Old notebook, limited resources, old O/S, Windows 2000 SP4, USB1.1 port, 300MHz Pentium with only 128M RAM. Initial install failed when WDA3100 adapter was connected thru external hub. Install worked okay when adapter was plugged directly into notebook USB. Once installed, this adapter works just fine thru the external hub / USB-port expander! Instruction sheet says download driver install program from Netgear. The downloaded driver for this Netgear WNDA3100v1 (version 1) adapter (as described on the Netgear product support web page) supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista. I needed Win2K. The driver for the full price WNDA3100v2 does not state Win2K support (but might work the same way). The current v2 adapter has a push-to-connect button, but you have full control clicking on the tray icon. Passing through walls, 5GHz band drops more than 2.4GHz band ; I see a 30% difference. Some reviews wrongly suggest adapter is faulty. it is just physics!

Pros: Very quiet, runs cooler than old drive it replaced. The 3x increase in storage capacity is GREAT and the combination deal adding the external 2.5" HDD case for just a buck comes in handy when it's time to clone the new drive. Easily cloned using Acronis Drive Image "Disk Clone" option.

Cons: An easily fixed installation issue NOT attributed to the new drive... The cloned drive did not boot normally into Windows XP Pro SP3. The screen displayed a cryptic DOS screen error message: "Windows could not start because of the following ARC firmware boot configuration problem: Did not properly generate ARC name for HAL and system paths. Please check the Windows documentation about ARC configuration options and your hardware reference manuals for additional information." Simple solution below...

Overall Review: If this error message occurs, you have to edit the hidden system file boot.ini. Search Google using text string "Did not properly generate ARC name for HAL and system paths". Look for search result to a domain called tek-tips. This has the essential answer to make the drive operational. Summary below... You must boot to DOS from a floppy (Win98 startup disk) or a bootable Windows startup CD. From a DOS command line, change file attributes for boot.ini in the root directory of the new C: drive, DOS: attrib +a -s -h -r c:\boot.ini [Enter]. Then edit 2 lines in boot.ini and save the file. Restore the original file attributes DOS: attrib +a +s +h +r c:\boot.ini [Enter] and reboot. On my pc the 5-line fixed boot.ini reads exactly as below where "multi(0)" replaces a longer string in the old file: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft WIndows XP Professional