Home > Consumer Reviews > Medialink - Wireless G USB Adapter - 802.11g - 54Mbps - Windows 2000 / XP / Vista 32-Bit / Vista 64-Bit Compatible

I've gone through 4 or 5 other usb wireless adapters. Some fail later, others fail right away, but this adapter worked right off the bat and has never needed to be restarted or has had any problems at all. I live in an apartment complex where there are lots and lots of wireless networks available. This adapter seems to have something special about. It never drops the connection for large file transfers over the network, and it never looses sight of my wireless router. Best adapter I've ever owned, and it was cheap!

I am a frugal shopper and looked around at local name brand stores for this type of product but all were Over-Priced, if you can imagine that. :(
So I looked at Amazon and low and behold I come across this product. I was apprehensive at 1st, not knowing the brand, but thought to give it a shot since it was the best deal and most reviews were positive. the product showed up in less than a week which suprised me and then started the install process. I am using Windows XP Professional so followed the installation instructions and installed in a snap. I can tell you I've had no drops in signal and the product works great.

Item arrived on time. It works perfectly fine, and it's very easy to use! I plugged it in, then installed software, and I had internet connection immediately.

I purchased this from Amazon after going through the reviews and I have to say it does work and it works well "IF" you are close to your router, like one room away or have a laptop to move closer to get better signal. As for setting up the usb adapter, it was quite easy and smooth. No problems with that working with Windows XP. If your computer is a couple rooms away or one floor up/down from the wireless router, I would suggest you skip this item. Basically the distance from the wireless router can not be too far, otherwise your reception will be pretty slow and weak, which defeats the point! If you have to be that close to the router, you might as well just get a long cable line!

My wireless router is in the office downstairs and my desktop was one story up and couple rooms away, less than 50 feet away, the reception comes and goes and was weak throughout - I was always getting less than 24mbps (getting 24mbps was rarely but it did get that from time to time) and with signal strength about 1 bar on average. I ended up getting a different wifi adapter with an antenna for the same computer in the same room, and it has much better reception (signal strength around with 4 bars majority of the time and with 54mbps on average). Save your money and buy a wifi adapter with an antenna, unless you will be only one room away from the wifi router.

Reason I gave it 2 stars - Reception was weak and must be close. However due to price and easy usb setup, I gave it an extra star. Good for someone that will be close by, like one room away or for older laptop that does not have wifi connection.

We did have some initial problems with the 1st adapter we purchased from Medialink. We returned it. A gentleman from Medialink emailed us almost immediately to find out what the problem was; I informed him about the issue. He immediately sent us a replacement adapter, which has worked perfectly since then. One thing I recommend is trying to install the adapter without using the CD first if you're using Vista or XP. The notebook we have is an older model (Dell B130), and it recognized the adapter right away-all we had to do was disable the notebook's internal wireless card (which had not been working properly for some time), then type in the wireless router security key. Just that quick we were up and running, with much faster page and video downloads than before. On the down side, it is true that the manual that comes with the item is a bit vague and hard to understand, but if you just plug the adapter in you may not need the instructions at all. In summary, I think this Medialink adapter is a bargain at the price-and works great to boot.