Hawking Technology Hi-Gain Wireless-150N USB Network Dish Adapter (HWDN2)

The dish is a little bit smaller than I was expecting--about 3 inches in diameter. I'm using it in a Macbook Pro, and the software is easy to install and I had it up and running in about 5 minutes and began searching wireless networks from around my neighborhood. Using it in my own house a few rooms over from where my router is, my Macbook's internal antenna says 32% signal strength. I plugged in this dish and it went up to 100%. Here are some speed test results (in MB/s) from my own network from where I was sitting (I have a 16MB/s Comcast line).Built-in-adapter:1. 8.00 down, 4.20 up2. 9.37 down, 3.36 up3. 8.89 down, 3.69 upDish:1. 15.96 down, 4.1 up2. 14.68 down, 4.27 up3. 15.35 down, 4.03 upSo as you can see, the dish performs much faster for home use when you might be on the other side of the house from your router. In addition to that, I was able to browse a number of networks from surrounding houses. I found a couple of people who use their last name as the network name (which I wouldn't recommend), and I was able to use white pages to find what their address is with my street name and their last name. Then I used Google Earth to figure out exactly how far they were from my house. One house whose network I could see was 3 houses down, or about 315 feet from where I was, and another was about 560 feet away. So, needless to say, this dish antenna works well at what it's supposed to do!Only 2 minor downsides that I've noticed. One is that, with the mac version of the software, I'm not able to see what the signal strength of an available network is before I actually connect to it. It does arrange the networks in order of signal strength, but I wish I could see actual percentages.The other thing is that the hinge that allows the dish to be moved up and down is very loose, so if I try to angle it upwards practically at all, it will fall down flat. Not too much of a problem though, unless for some reason the network you are trying to join is above you.

I just installed the HWDN2 today, and it appears to work great. I went from 3 bars with a MyEssentials USB stick adapter to the full 5 bars with the Hawking. That is through one floor, several walls, and from one end of the 2600 ft^2 house to the other. Nice job. As another test, my neighbor's network went from 2 bars up to 4 bars with the Hawking.HOWEVER, despite the box, the online sales literature, and the inside package install guide saying that Win7 is supported, it cannot be installed on Win7 (mine is 32 bit) with the in-box CD. Two solutions: if you already have a way to connect the computer to the Internet, plug in the HWDN2 and Win7 will connect to the Internet and find the appropriate device drivers. Alternatively, I contacted Hawking support and they promptly sent me the response:"Please download the win 7 driver from:[...]"Note this still means you don't get the Hawking application software installed, just the driver to make it work. Given that some others seem to consider their SW bloatware, that doesn't bother me.

My computer is located upstairs from the wireless router in my home (Linksys 802.11 type N). The signal has to go thru a wall, up the stairs and through a door. With the USB Cisco type N adapter I was using, I got poor signal strength (2 bars or less) and corresponding video streaming. My laptop's internal Broadcom adapter had even worse reception and was basically incompatible with the Linksys router due to Vista issues--hence the purchase of a Linksys USB adapter.I ordered the Hawking HWDN2 Hi Gain dish in hopes it would improve my reception. I have burned through several routers and USB adapters that claimed to be Vista compatible. And we all know what a "wonderful" product Vista is--so easy, so universally compatible with everything! Getting back to reality, with each new router or adapter or modem or software app, I had to spend hours on the phone with customer reps trying to make each and every new product work with my marvelous Vista OS. (I will be getting Windows 7 shortly!)The Hawking is amazing--it actually worked right out of the box with Vista. No hours-long calls to 877 #'s in India or Indonesia. No $9.95 customer service charges like Cisco charged me--the penalty for buying their router and linking it to a laptop with Vista. After loading the driver software and plugging the antenna in and pointing the antenna in the general direction of my router, I was on the net with close to max signal strength. The whole process took 5 minutes and it has worked very well ever since. The antenna now sees 3 times the number of local area networks my other adapters did. Video streaming (YouTube, etc.) now works much more smoothly with almost no interruptions. The software is easy to use as well. Am very pleased with this purchase. The build quality of the antenna is good--for molded plastic. The dish rotates up 90 deg. from the base. It won't withstand being dropped 4 stories onto concrete, but for sitting on a desk, it is more than rugged enough. I most strongly recommend this product. It will fix alot of reception problems. If my Linksys router goes belly up, I will definitely buy a Hawking router the next time around.

Easy to use, decent range, very very fragile, not exactly high speed.Got it for my RV, which is about 300' grin the wap a pretty decent router, works for a stupid enough lower speed connection (about 500Kbps average at this range)The cord is pretty flimsy, as is the unit itself, dish on mine won't remain upright without assistance, and the cord has to be in the sweet spot to work, but I'm still happy with the range.