Faux' Blog

Dear Belkin, choice makes humans sad.

Which f5d7050 do I have? No idea.

As usual, the device has a huge STOP: Run the Installation CD-ROM FIRST. Inserting the CD and clicking “install” gets me:

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Belkin Wireless USB Utility
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Click on icon if you want to communicate directly to another wireless computer near you (Ad-Hoc).
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OK
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…and then disappears.

I decided, at random, to download the latest version of the drivers for Windows XP, ie. f5d7050-ver4.exe, a tiny 28MB, which do exactly the same as the CD.

A WinRAR extract of the download (eventually) yields a folder called Driver containing the necessary Windows driver files for 98 thru XP. Total compressed size of the necessary parts of the Driver folder that are needed for XP? 120kB. I don’t even want to know what craplets were bundled along with the driver.

Result: A working wireless network card having completely ignored all of the warnings from the packaging, setup, installer, manual, etc. and only the final step, installing the (non-WHQL’d) driver, as Administrator.

And people wonder why it’s the technically inept that have all the problems with their OSes…

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