Airlink Fully Compatible Wireless N 150 Ultra Mini-USB Adapter (AWLL5099)

Bought this to simply get rid of another wire/cable in my home office. Works very well and easy to set up. If you use the sleep function on your PC (Win 7), this device may not be active again when waking up the PC, that's if you use the Microsoft drivers. Use the drivers that come with the Airlink USB wireless adapter and the sleep function will probably work OK for you when waking the PC from sleep mode. You can get the MAC ID through Windoze, or if you look closely on the Airlink device, it is in light colored print, but very small. Happy with this purchase, and does what it's supposed to do, at a great price!

This is a good USB wifi adapter that is small and apparently well supported across OS X, Windows, and Linux. I purchased this adapter for use with the Raspberry Pi board (Model B, 512MB), and therefore needed Linux support.Linux recognized this adapter immediately, and loads the driver. There is some other configuration needed to get it fully running, of course, but once done the adapter works well. I have not measured the range of it.For fellow hackers, the adapter I received uses the Realtek 8188CUS chipset, and is identified via lsusb by this:ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN AdapterPROTIP: As of Oct 2012, there is a known issue with Raspberry Pi 512MB boards and USB devices that causes the system to spontaneously reboot. When plugging this adapter in, the RPi will reboot, but will work fine after that. The issue is caused by a change in the circuit surrounding the USB hub chip, and a high-current USB device causes too great a surge in the circuit, causing the reset.

My MacBook Pro airport card died awhile ago - $$$ to replace it and I wasn't confident a mini-adaptor would work.Got tired of being tethered to a USB cord and figured I couldn't go wrong for the price.Set up instructions weren't clear but Airlink Tech Support was easily reachable and very helpful.Confusion #1 - whether or not to keep the USB cord plugged in since I kept getting a message saying it was unplugged - figured it was looking for a driver for setup or needed internet access to complete the set up. Not the case.Also, wasn't clear at which point to plug in the adaptor.Another glitch was that the instructions said to "Go to System Preferences/Network and then follow the instructions from there." Except when I plugged in the adaptor, another box came up that wanted set-up preferences. It wasn't clear if I was setting the preferences on my Mac network preferences or in this Airlink pop-up box (turns out it was the latter).HOWEVER, after using it 2 weeks, 2 things happened: When I turned off my computer and got back on, the setting weren't saved in the Airlink Preferences. Called Airlink and again, they were very helpful, though not sure why they didn't check this when we first set it up!! And kept getting a notification to set up something on my MAC, which went away when the previous issue was addressed, i.e., the Airlink Preferences wants the password of your network and it must be "saved."Tech support walked me though it and it works GREAT! Wish I got this ages ago!!! Oh, minus 1-star b/c of unclear instructions.

I bought this because it was so highly rated by a lot of users, especially those making RPi systems. The internal wireless in my wife's work laptop had died and I wanted to get her something tiny to get her by until her work could get the laptop replaced.Installation was easy and worked in a Dell Windows 7 laptop, HP laptop that had been upgraded to Windows 8, and a DIY Windows 8 desktop. All installed correctly and began working and I used the latest driver from their website.I did some research on their website reading the manual and specs and the actual range is never specified anywhere. I looked at various others like this and the only time I found specific range information was on a TrendNet micro unit like this which stated 30M indoor and 50M outdoor. I personally felt that those numbers were way larger than expected for such a tiny single antenna unit and was hoping for 10M indoors at best. We have a 2 story house and I also did not expect this to work on the 2nd floor as more powerful units have issues reaching there too.However... the best I could get out of it and get a signal that worked was maybe 3M (about 10 feet). Sitting on the sofa (5M) the laptop this was intended for would get connection and signal in the 30% mark and was very happy. However there was no data transmission whatsoever. If I picked the laptop up and began walking towards the AP the signal strength went up but it took until I was <10 feet from the AP to get data transmission. I didn't get speeds fast enough to do tasks at normal speed until I was within 6 feet of the AP.I then tried it in my W8 laptop and I experienced the same issues and then in a W8 DIY desktop near the AP and it got good signal and data speeds.If you want to be away from your AP I'd recommend a larger device with a bigger antenna otherwise this unit just wouldn't reach. If you're near the AP then this is a nice small unit that should work for you.

Pleasantly surprised by the streaming speed. I have a much more expensive D-Link Wireless USB adapter hooked up to my desktop. When I ran side by side comparisons, the Airlink was consistently twice as fast as the D-Link. Was getting 10 mbps on the upload and 12mbps on the download. That is with the Airlink showing 48% signal strength. From the opposite end and downstairs of a two story house, the Airlink continued to hit the same upload and download speeds. At 75% less than the D-Link I would highly recommend. And the Airlink is running on Windows 8. I had no problem getting it to work straight away. Just follow the instructions and use the CD that it comes with. Took less than 3 minutes to get it working. If for reason this dies in less than one year I will update this post. If the post is not updated then assume everything I just wrote is still valid. Finally, Amazon Prime Shipping rocks - had it delivered in less than 48 hours!