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I am using it in a trailer next to my house during a home remodel. In fact, I can pick up 5 to 6 neighbors networks.
I stream Netflix movies with no problem and downloads are plenty fast. Also, It has never dropped a connection.My connection speed varies between 24 and 54 Mbps.
I have been using this adapter for about 9 months and I have had no problems with it. The reception is so good I was able to turn the power down on my wireless router.
I will definitely consider Belkin again if I am in the market for a wireless adapter. Of note, I don't use the bundled software and got the drivers from Belkin's website.The range is great.
The signal is going through a stucco wall, a fence and metal trailer siding to get to my PC.
5/5Connection Strength/Reliability- 80% of the time I'm at 3 bars with windows rating the signal strength at Good. My internet is the bottleneck at 10Mbps so I have not tested this out to see if it will in fact go the full 54 Mbps. Really the only instructions you need is to put in the cd first and then you are prompted by the cd to do everything else. 4/5Speed- I really can't give a full opinion on this since I don't do any home network stuff. OS- Windows Vista Premium x64 SP1USB Network Adapbter Model- Belkin F5D7050 version 5Time of use- 5 daysPrice- At the current price $24.36, it is on the lower to medium range of what a 802.11g adapter will run you these days.
4/5Overall- If you need blazing fast and a lot of range, I'd go with the newer 802.11n standard, but if you are a little more budget conscious, don't need the range and/or don't need the speed like me, then this is a great buy. Also of note, this product has a LIFETIME warranty. I use this adapter to play games, download files and surf the internet. I consider this very minor though. I am about 100-150 feet and 3 walls away from a Dlink wireless N router. My computer is on the ground and the cord is just long enough for me to put the base on my desk so the usb adapter isn't stuck on a usb port behind my computer in the corner. I have not experienced any dropped signals. n/a.Misc- Don't be fooled into thinking you will get to move this wireless adapter all around to find the best signal via the usb cord and base they supply.
5/5Installation- It took less than 2 minutes on my machine to be up and running, using the very simple instructions included in the box. For my purposes though the speed is more than enough for my internet connection and playing games. 5/5 Most of the other 20% of the time I'm at Very Good strength and a small amount of the time I'm at Fair. For comparison, my old 802.11b laptop would average around 2 bars with occasional loss in connection when it went down to 1 bar.
Also the connectivity isn't great because it will drop FREQUENTLY. Every time I upgrade my machine I give it another try just for kicks and this will be the third 2.0 enabled motherboard it claims doesn't have 2.0. Another issue I had was with it not recognizing my machine every time I restarted it or took the thing out of the USB port, I had to reinstall every time. I have never gotten this thing to work in the years that I've had it. I can only get 11Mbps on it because it claims I don't have USB 2.0 on my motherboard.
I wonder why it's so hard for Belkin to write a driver for Macs. I tried all the workarounds and terminal setting patches described by other reviewers. None worked for me on either an iBook or PowerBook (yes, the internal airport cards fail and are too expensive to replace).
On my girlfriend's dual boot desktop up strairs I had no Ubuntu issues, but the windows software was a bit unfriendly and hard to use. This worked out of the box with ubuntu 8.10. So 5 star for linux, and 4 for windows. It seem to connect as well as any other wifi device if you use the stand. Ilso plugged it into to my Suse 10.1 workstation, it saw networks and connected to networks. So it's safe to say it should work with most up to date linux distros.
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