Hardware ReviewsHawking wireless starter kit (NK330W) Hawking Technology puts all of the basics needed to start a wireless home network in a single package with this kit, the NK330W. The kit includes a wireless access point (WAP) that can be connected via Ethernet cable to one computer on your network and a wireless PC card that can be connected to a laptop computer to complete the network. Interestingly, the kit is actually promoted on the package as wireless access point with a free wireless PC Card. In reality, this would be an overpriced wireless access point, but the combination is priced well, if not the lowest you might find, for a WAP and PC Card combination. We found if for $145 at Personal Home Networks. The advantage of the Hawking kit, of course, is getting everything compatible that will make it easier for any troubleshooting and support issues. Overall, we found the Hawking gear to be well constructed, with good drivers and OK (but not great) instructions and performance. Read on for more. Overview This Hawking kit is the first we've ever seen
shipped in a blister pack (a plastic shell that hangs on a peg at the
store). The blister pack has a large display card inside that provides
lots of information about the Hawking equipment and wireless networking in
general. Inside, The Wireless Network PC Card -- this is model number WE110P+ and is similar to other wireless PC Cards we've reviewed. This fits in an open PC Card slot (available on most notebooks and laptops). The gray plastic end (the antenna) sticks out about an inch once inserted in a notebook. About six pages of the manual are devoted to installation instructions for the card, covering Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. The drivers are all contained in the included CD. The CD also includes a utility to help configure and monitor the wireless network. The Wireless Access Point -- this is Hawking Technology model WA300. As we've covered in many other wireless network equipment reviews, the wireless access point, or WAP, is a device that connects the wireless portion of a home network (in this case just a single notebook or laptop with the wireless PC Card) to the wired section of a home network (in this case just a single desktop connected via an Ethernet cable to the WAP). Of course, as even the Hawking package points out, the WAP can be connected to a switch or router and provide access for many other computers on the wired network to the wireless side of the network. And, as the package also points out, you can have multiple wireless clients connected via the WAP. The Hawking WAP is about the size of a small paperback book and has a nifty blue and black styled case. Four LEDs on the side provide information on power, status of the WAP and separate LEDs for the LAN and wireless LAN to show when connections are made and when data is being sent or received. On the back is the jack for the power adapter and a single RJ45 port for an Ethernet cable. A small switch just above the connector changes the port from a straight connection to a crossover connection. Based on our tests, straight is used for connecting the WAP to hubs and switches (as explained in the written and electronic manual) and the crossover setting is used for connecting the WAP directly to a computer (unfortunately, this is not explained in the manual). On the back at the top is a three-inch antenna that can be adjusted as needed. The written instruction manual covers the simple installation of the WAP using a built in web browser utility. The manual on the CD also covers the installation using a separate utility. Installation Overall, installation of the Hawking gear was made a bit more difficult than it should have been due to two issues as detailed below. Other than that, installation went fairly smoothly. The Wireless Network Access Point Following the written instruction manual, we installed the WAP first. We connected the WAP via an Ethernet cable to our test desktop computer. Set the uplink switch to straight, powered on the WAP and then powered up our test computer after setting the TCP/IP address to 192.168.1.2 as the manual explains. Unfortunately, the LAN connection LED did not light because the uplink switch must be set to crossover when connecting to a computer. This is not covered in the Hawking manual and could be a real issue for network "newbies." We hope Hawking will correct this oversight. Once we reset the uplink switch, the LAN LED came on and we opened up Internet Explorer and typed in the default address of the WAP (192.168.1.1) in order to enter the built-in, web-enabled setup utility. However, this did not work. We had to install another utility included on the CD to directly access the WAP. We then discovered that the WAP was set to a default address of 192.168.1.100 (not 192.168.1.1 as indicated in the instruction manual). This again could be a major issue for network newbies as they wouldn't get past the first steps in the instruction manual. This needs to be corrected. Once we set the proper address in our test machine's web browser, the utility asked for the default logon name and password which we left blank. We clicked OK and the setup utility opened. We clicked on "setup wizard" at the top and started configuring the WAP as you can see below.
We kept all of the default settings and clicked on save. We then rebooted the WAP as instructed and moved to the installation of the wireless PC Card. The Wireless Network PC Card Next, we installed the wireless PC Card on our test notebook using the included, written instructions. Our notebook uses Windows 98 Second Edition, but the instructions also have details for installation on Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. We slid the PC Card into an open slot on the notebook and, per the instructions, Windows detected the card and started the "Add New Hardware Wizard." We selected the option for the wizard to search for the best driver and checked the box for CD (after inserting the CD) on the list of locations. The wizard copied the necessary files from the Hawking CD and, as usual, copied several files from the master Windows 98 install CD (we always keep it handy). The wizard finished and we restarted the notebook. Next, we followed the written instructions to install the wireless utility used to configure and monitor the wireless PC Card. We found the utility folder on the CD and double-clicked on the setup.exe file to install the utility. We clicked "Next" a few times to accept the default location for the files and icons and the install program copied all of the necessary files. We then clicked on the small icon now found on the taskbar to launch the utility, but since we were using all of the default settings, our wireless card was already showing a positive connection to the WAP (this is also indicated by the icon itself which turns green with a positive link; yellow shows a weak link and red shows no link). That was it. Our wireless card was communicating with the WAP. However, we still needed to install and set up the proper network protocols in order for the network to communicate within Windows (to share files, etc). The Hawking instructions do a nice job of detailing how to install the TCP/IP protocol, but unfortunately, give no instructions on how to configure it. In our case, we installed the protocol on the notebook and provided the manual address "192.168.1.3" which we knew matched up with the default address of the WAP ("192.168.1.100") and the desktop machine ("192.168.1.2"). Note that the numbers are all the same, except for the last set. That's key with TCP/IP. If you're interested, we have a little more on using this protocol in our how-to article on connecting Macs and PCs. Once we completed that step and shared a specific drive on both machines, our network was up and running. One important note, by the way: the Hawking PC Card worked in our notebook even while we also had the notebook's built-in Ethernet card active. Most, but not all, wireless PC Cards required us to disable the built-in adapter in order to get the wireless PC Card to work. Obviously, we much prefer the Hawking so that we can easily switch back and forth between a wired and wireless network as necessary. Kudos to Hawking on that feature. Performance To test the performance of this wireless network system, we copied a 30 megabyte file from the notebook with the wireless PC Card to the desktop machine connected via Ethernet cable from its built-in 10/100Mbps LAN adapter to the Hawking WAP. We ran the copy tests in two locations: one was just three feet from the WAP and one was several rooms away. In each instance, we copied the file back and forth twice, then averaged the number of seconds for the four file copies. All tests were run with just the TCP/IP network protocol installed. The results are shown below in seconds required to complete the copy. The blue bars indicate the results for a Hawking PC Card connected via wireless network to the Hawking WAP. For comparison, we've included results for a Compex PC Card connected wirelessly to the Compex wireless access point previously reviewed (red bars) and a Belkin PC card wirelessly connected to a Belkin wireless access point also previously reviewed (yellow bars). As you can see, the Hawking PC Card/WAP combination falls just slightly behind the other two in the "near" tests and a bit further behind in the "far" tests. While this clearly doesn't put Hawking at the top of our speed rankings, keep in mind that we're still talking just seconds of difference while copying a very large file. In real life, you might notice the difference if you spend a lot of time copying large files across your network. In many other tasks, you probably would not notice a difference at all.
Support Hawking Technology provides a number of support options including e-mail and a web site with some FAQs. They also have a U.S. technical support phone number (not toll free), but that number is only listed on the web site and not in the installation guide or on the package. Summary Overall, we found this Hawking gear to be solid in manufacture and the price was certainly competitive. Performance did fall a bit behind some other companies' gear, but even a few seconds in copying a large file will probably not be detectable in every day use. What really caused us concern in this review were the problems with the installation instructions not matching up with the actual settings on the equipment. While experienced home networkers will probably be able to figure out these issues, we feel strongly that they could cause real frustration for network newbies. We hope Hawking will address these issues and we'll add an update to this review if they do. In the meantime, if you don't think you'll have an issue working around the instructions and you want a solid wireless PC Card and WAP combination at a competitive price with OK performance, do check out this Hawking starter kit. Grade = B- Details
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the pack includes an easy to see wireless access point (WAP), a power
adapter, a wireless PC Card, a small (but relatively thorough) 30-page
installation guide and a CD. 
