Getting a demonstration of the equipment is a good way to become familiar with how it works. The company we called offered to come present the equipment and show us how it worked, as well as leave it for us to use for a while. The cost of the demo was $100, which would be discounted from your purchase price.

Our other option was to demo the equipment ourselves. Some companies may not offer this, but we were able to find one that did. This option is only recommended for people who understand computer hardware, networking, and TCP-IP protocols. Since we have the appropriate knowledge and technical skills, and did not want to pay the $100, we chose this option.

We were sent one access point and two PCMCIA cards. We would have liked a station adapter, but were not able to get one due to stock issues with the company. It took one person about two hours to hook up and get the equipment running for the first time. We had a few problems in hooking up the equipment. Our first problem was in getting the PCMCIA card running. Because the equipment was used for demos, the first PC card I tried did not have up to date software. I found this after deciding to try the second card, because the first was not working. When I opened the second box I saw the version 2.0 software. Once I used this I didn't have any problems with the PC cards. My next problem was getting the access point working. I finally figured out that there was one step left off the quick setup guide. To make the access point run with the new settings, it needed to be turned off and then back on. Once these two small bugs were figured out our wireless network was running. Because we were connected to a hard wired backbone, which was also connected to the internet, we were able to easily browse the World Wide Web.