Many of these adapters were made available a five years ago when Windows 98 was the big thing and haven't really been updated since. Quite a few of the products will claim to work with Windows 2000 or Windows XP, but they don't tell you that you'll have to download and install new drivers until you reach customer support. Even then, many of the devices just don't work reliably.

Surprisingly, it seems to be the "big guys" that have the faulty products in this category. Belkin, well known for good cables and other things, has probably the worst adapters available when used with Windows XP. IOGEAR, ATEN, and Tripp-Lite all sell the same device with different drivers, but they all seem to have problems.