D-Link DWA-552 Xtreme N Wireless PCI Adapter
$ 79.99
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D-Link DWA-552 Extreme-N Wireless PCI Adapter
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3 thoughts on “D-Link DWA-552 Extreme-N Wireless PCI Adapter”
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Used on both Vista and XP,
Hello all, thanks for taking the time to read this.
It took me a long time to really get a good handle on this cards performance and I have had it now for about 3 months. While the router that accompanies this adapter is the best wireless router I have ever used, I have found this PCI adapter to be just okay.
While it does it’s job pretty well, it absolutely did not impress me as an “Extreme-N” PCI adapter. Let me say a little about my setup. I have the DLink Extreme N router upstairs and the PC that has this adapter in it sits on the floor and is almost directly across the house but downstairs (proably around 40-50 feet away and through about 4 walls at about -30 degrees). Windows thinks that it has a 300Mbps connection, but the included DLink software drivers can calculate the actual connection speed and it seems to fluctuate from anywhere from 2mbps and 108mbps (usually is around 32Mbps). The average throughput I usually get is around 60Mbps (which is around 7-8 megabytes a second…since you divide Mbps (Megabits) by 8bits to get Megabytes). If you dont know about the extreme-n router, I have a review on that too, but quickly its a gigabit router so it handle 1000Mbps (125 megabytes/sec) if you are using a wire, so there is no bottleneck within the router. I usually see around a 60{b81fbfd19e1fca5890798868c0714c408bbd5ec471654b6f9630c0fffa6e7eb3} connection on the N network whereas my Centrino laptop in the same position gets around an 80{b81fbfd19e1fca5890798868c0714c408bbd5ec471654b6f9630c0fffa6e7eb3} connection off of the “G” network that the router also transmits.
Although I am a little annoyed at the connection and throughput speeds, I am most annoyed at the fact that at the time of this review (5/2007) this PCI adapter is COMPLETELY and UTTERLY useless for Windows Vista. My Vista kept crashing (im talking a HARD crash…complete lockup of the computer, hard reset needed, after only 5-10 minutes past the boot-up process…consistently), and I tried to figure out why. I spoke to MS Customer service thinking that since Vista was so new, that there was a problem on their end. Together we figured out that it was this card that kept crashing the computer. After we disabled and removed the card from the system, it stopped crashing (I even tried to make it crash, but it was rock solid). The drivers I used were specifically labled Beta Vista Drivers, so until the drivers are out of the Beta phase, I wouldn’t trust them. Since my house isnt yet wired for ethernet, and putting the wireless modem in that room would make my wireless network quite useless, I have a $250 piece of software (vista) just sitting on my shelf.
Anyways, if you are just using Windows XP, this should work out fine, not spectactular, not horrible…still better than the “G” networks (I will WAY outperform them if you are not as far from the router as I am) But not as spectacular as I hoped (Based on how spectacular the 655 router is).
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|Near flawless installation and configuration,
With Windows XP, I did not experience any of the problems the other two reviewers mentioned. Have not tried with Vista (and probably never will until Mister Softee ends support on XP.) I recommend this card and the supporting router (dlink DIR-655) based on my own success with both. I did however upgrade the firmware on the DIR-655 after having difficulties.) This card replaced a dinosaur Linksys Wireless G card that had a broom handle sized antenna and the worst reception.
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|Wireless N for under 50 bucks,
I used this for my desktop that i moved to my room, instead of getting a 100ft ethernet cable, i decided to try this adapter despite many critical reviews. Luckily, i did because this adapter works GREAT on my vista 64 bit desktop. I picks up my router (A netgear WNDR3700 Dual band N) within 1 second of logging in to my account. Speeds are very fast, 17 mb/s download and 3.4 mb/s upload, results by speedtest.net. I usually get that much with the desktop hard wired to my router, so no loss in speed. Signal is pretty good through 3 walls, 1 heater, and my desk.
Pros:
Cheap- under $50 is a very good price to pay for xtreme performance
easy to install- just plug in the adapter to an empty PCI slot and screw in the antennaes
FAST!- very good speed and signal
Now for the Cons, the fit was a bit awkward with the PCI slot, but with a little motivation, you can screw the fastner in with little problem. Also, VERY IMPORTANT: DO NOT use the DLINK software included in the disc, it is sloppy and slow, and probably why alot of people have had problems with connections.
DO THIS INSTEAD: after you log in the first time after installing the adapter, windows will ask you to find the drivers, click yes, then when it tells you to insert the disc, do it. This way, windows will download only the drivers from the disc instead of the network software crap. After installation of the drivers, you are golden. Just click the “connect to” tab under the start menu like you would on your windows laptop and choose your network. All this is assuming you arnt already connected to the internet when installing because if you are, the driver installation program will just get the drivers online instead of from the disc.
Cons:
awkward fit- the adapter dosnt fit perfectly in the pci slot cover, but that might just be an isolated issue
DRAFT N 2.0- this is one of the later versions of wireless N, its not the official wireless N protocol that was issued a couple months ago, i still get very good speeds and connections, but just saying because amazon advertises this as the official wireless N.
Final thoughts:
overall, this is a very nice and easy adapter that is much better then the one in my wireless G laptop. just a small modification needed in driver installation, but i highly recommend it and wouldn’t hesitate in buying it again if i had another desktop.
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