Fuck Linksys, and the USB Ethernet adaptor you rode in on.

[friedo]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, meet the Linksys USB100M USB-Ethernet Adaptor.

It’s a piece of shit. But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of my angry letter which I wrote to Linksys:

I am extremely dissapointed with the USB100M USB Ethernet adaptor on which I wasted $30 (plus sales tax) at CompUSA earlier today. The design of this product is so utterly inept as to be beyond description. I am especially angry because I have found Linksys’s networking products to always be of superb quality. I have personally bought or reccomended at least a dozen Linksys routers and wireless base stations, and I have never, ever heard a single complaint about them. I will not, however, be reccomending Linksys’s USB network adaptors to anybody.

I don’t know what was going through the mind of the caffeine-addled engineer who thought it would be a good idea to omit a standard RJ45 connector from the USB100M. Instead, a completely inexplicable, mysterious, wobbly, delicate foldout connector is there instead. Worse, no instructions or pictures explaining how to plug an Ethernet cable into this bizarre mutant connector are provided with the product. Thus, after two hours of fiddling with this ridiculous contraption, trying to connect my Cat-5 to it in every way imaginable, I am left with dashed dreams of an Ethernet-enabled Tivo and a broken piece of crap that was once (alledgedly) a USB ethernet adaptor. Those flimsy, micron-thick pieces of rubber and aluminum will do me no good now, even with the dedicated application of duct tape to the problem area.

I would like a refund for this thing. I don’t want to pay for mailing it to you. I would like someone to reccomend a USB ethernet adaptor that a) doesn’t suck, b) has a standard RJ45 connector on one end, and c) is preferably not made by your company.

Please keep up the good work with your routers and switches. Please fire whoever greenlighted the USB100M. Thank you.

Man, that thing pisses me off.

[GuanoLad]

The USB10T looks more like what you want. Why didn’t you get that?

[gazpacho]

The wobbly thing is so they can make the adapter really tiny. On the presumption that people with laptops like really tiny things. I see from the website that it is indeed as I suspected a really tiny thing.
The USB100TX looks more like your thing.

[astro]

It’s the same concept as the pop out X-Jack which a number PCMCIA/PCCARD type notebook modems used. The X-Jack worked, but was always far more susceptible to damage than dongle style units if the jack was physically stressed. The even higher stress that the thicker Cat-5 ethernet cable would put on a fold out jack does make it an engineering challenge. I had a chance to buy one of those new Linksys USB units on sale the other day but passed it up because of concern about it’s ruggedness.

Just return it to the retailer and tell them it’s a poorly engineered POS.

[astro]

In reading the Amazon reviews it seems some people are having the same problem you did

[friedo]

Y’all are right, of course. I failed to do proper due dilligence. It was such a small thing that I never thought to read reviews and research which was best. Oh well. Live and learn.