I had ordered a mini wireless USB adapter for 33 dollars thinking it was cheaper than the most.It did not work, it detected 2 connections and the quality of signal was bad.I was not able to go online with that adapter.I returned it and looked for a cheaper but more useful alternative.I found this after reading about Alfa antenna adapters.Alfas were more expensive (30-40 dollars) and I did not want to spend that much because I did not want to have a costly non-functioning adapter.I wanted to give this a chance instead since it was 12.99.If it did not work, it was no big deal.
WOW! It does work great.While the previous adapter detected only 2 networks, this detects 5-6 networks and the signal quality is good (60-80%.It stays connected at a decent speed.
I highly recommend this adapter for people who need more and reliable reception at a value price.
The only possible disadvantage of this adapter is its antenna protrusion.If you have preschoolers like I do, they might bump into it and break it.Apparently you can not have it all (perfect reception+ultra-compact design+good price) at once.
So far I am very happy with my purchase. Thanks to Amazon (for free super saver shipping) and the vendor. 802.11g/n USB WiFi Wireless Lan Adapter w/5dBi Antenna
This is a great product. Realtek has been for long time a great network interface card's chip provider. The chip on this device is indeed Realtek. This product provides good signal detection and seamless and stable connection. In order to achieve this, on Windows XP, DO NOT INSTALL program provided by the companion miniCD's autorun. Instead, plug the device and when Windows new hardware wizard ask for drivers use manual search. Then insert the miniCD and point to the correct directory on the CD according to your operating system. For Windows XP there's a folder named WinXP (<drive>:\WinXP). Then let the hardware wizard install the device from there and it will use built-in Windows Wireless Connection Manager. This is far easier to use than vendor's software provided which is aimed at a very low control level (not for the average user).
Big directional antenna is a plus on this device. It's cheap and works like a dream. Poor documentation and inadequate default management program (they should have just let Windows handle everything from the start), but you can sort this out easily.
Came with a CD of drivers for Mac/WindowsXP/Vista, but I was able to find the Realtek 8187 WLAN driver for Windows 7 on the Realtek website and changed the Device Manager settings with Windows Update. Worked pretty well so far and at a great price!
I was sick of my old Broadcom wireless card which was poorly supported, WPA neither worked under Linux nor Windows. So I ordered this one. This USB card worked out of the box: I plugged it in, it appeared in the network manager, I selected the network, typed in the WPA2 password, it worked right away. No installation of extra packages required or fiddling with drivers. I am running Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28.
The adapter works just fine with 32-bit Windows 7 - I plugged it into my trusty little netbook and it found signals I had never dreamed it would find, at far higher signal strength. But I didn't buy it for the netbook; I bought it for my desktop, which runs 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. Neither the drivers on the disk (the newer packages come with the Windows 7 drivers) nor drivers from RealTek work. It especially doesn't work with the configuration software installed - and to make matters especially awesome, installing the configuration software has semi-permanently corrupted the entire networking stack on my machine, even after removing the configuration software, leading to me being unable to use the wired connection now too. I will now have to spend about $60 on an external hard drive to back up everything that needs backing up, and reinstall Windows 7 from scratch. Thanks, BlueProton!
I ordered this product and then read that there might be a problem with using it for the Windows 7 64 bit. I used the mini cd that came with it and followed the advice of a previous review to install the driver first and not use the plug and play feature. It worked great! I installed the driver, restarted the computer and was up on a wifi connection in less than 10 minutes. Price was absolutely wonderful also since I was purchasing this product for my non-profit preschool to be able to connect our desktop to a wifi connection in our building that we rent space in. The connection was fast also. I will be loading pictures tomorrow and see how that works!
I'm using this adapter on a Linux system (Ubuntu 10.04), and it worked straight out of the box. Setup was a no-brainer. I didn't need the installation CD; it's still sitting in the original package, untouched. The signal strength is excellent, and overall reliability has been 100%. Great value at a low cost.
This is a Realtek RTL8187L--if, like, me you're unable to use their miniCD (seriously, who still has that kind of drive?), you can go to Realtek's website to download the driver. As of this writing, you can find it here:
[...]
SCROLL DOWN to the 8187--don't make the same mistake I did and download the first thing on the page, which is the driver for the 8185. :) I moved the driver from another computer using a flash drive, but over the LAN would work too. Installing that will give you a little graphical interface for selecting a detected wireless network, entering the key, etc. (Look in the start menu under Realtek.) Works just like the wireless network setup interface on my Windows-based laptop. A couple seconds after I hit OK, XP found the connection, and I've had consistent reliable internet on this computer ever since.
This thing saved me way more than $15 worth of trouble finding a way to run cables to this room! - 80211g - Wireless Adapter - Wi-fi - Wireless Lan Adapter'
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