Kootek AC 600Mbps USB WiFi Adapter Wireless 802.11ac WiFi Dongle Dual Band 2.4 GHz / 5GHz AC Adapter for PC Windows 10/8 / 8.1/7 / XP/Vista/Mac OS 10.6-10.13

This device worked initially quite well. After writing exactly what happened I was contacted by the company and a replacement was promptly delivered to me. I worked through the details of reloading the device and software and again I've got a great performing supplemental wifi antenna. Initially I'd done a rating of 1 star but after such great support by the company, I've increased the rating to 4 stars. For now, I'm withholding one star as I wait to see what happens with this iteration. My plan is to upgrade this review further (today is May 18, 2018) should this device continue to function as well as it does and it appears my initial device was just a fluke.Details as to what happened initially. The device was ordered on January 16, 2018 and delivered on January 18, 2018. My return window ended on February 17, 2018. On April 23, 2018 my computer would crash every time with the device plugged into a USB port. I made multiple attempts and saw the error code “kmode exception not handled” each time the device was in my machine. My laptop ran just fine without the device in it. The short lifespan and the corruption that it appears to do to the operation of my computer was a real detractor and I was thinking I'd made a mistake with my purchase. Unfortunately, I was too much outside of the return window to work with Amazon but that's when contact with the company kicked in. Additionally, looking at the company website, it appears the device is warranted by the company for up to 18 months which is quite good for an electronic product. The website navigation took some learning as it was not as straight forward as my thinking went but I figured it out in short order. Ultimately, I found the information I needed, the drivers needed were there, and the system is up and running quite nicely.

Some background on why I got this: My Asus laptop that I have had for 5 years in May 2017 has been having connectivity issues with the internal wireless card. After 10 minutes of working my wireless card in my Asus would stop transmitting/receiving data, which had become infuriating. This dongle saved my laptop from having a permanent location on my home desk. After turning off the internal wireless card and prioritizing this dongle I have now revitalized my laptop to be used around the house and lets be honest on the couch. The speed is great and I have access all around the house so the antenna has the power I need. In addition to having the power, I have not noticed a difference in battery usage with this dongle (this is likely because I turned off the internal wireless card). This is a low cost solution for laptops, or other computers, which have internal wireless card issues and I would highly recommend.The only minor complaint is that this is not a flush or smaller dongle. This complaint is not enough to take a star away because the price is right for what I recieved

I probably shouldn't be reviewing this yet since I just plugged it in 2 minutes ago. But I'm very happy that it was instant plug and play on Windows 10. Plugged it into the back of my desktop and it picked up signal in less than 10 seconds. Ran speed test and its easily maxing out my 50Mbps Verizon Fios. So literally from the time I started opening the package to when the speed test was finished, it was probably under a minute.Part of why I'm so happy is because I tried the harder more complicated route of getting an M.2 WiFi card and antenna kit for my desktop since my new motherboard his the slot. After opening my computer, trying two sets of antennas that just wouldn't snap in, I finally gave up and sent all that back to Amazon. So here, for half the price, and less than a minute of effort, I have WiFi that's plenty fast. Also there are no huge antennas sticking out the case. Don't know why I put myself through all of that in the first place. So if your wondering whether to go USB wifi, PCI Express Wifi, or M.2 Wifi, do yourself a favor and just get this. The only con is Bluetooth isn't included, but whatever, I read that the m.2 cards have iffy Bluetooth anyways.

This is now working, but what a hassle it was to install it! First of all, the driver comes on a cd-rom. Of course, none of the computers on the premises have a cd-rom drive. The instructions say if you don't have one, download from kootek.com/support. Good luck. This just takes you to a generic page with a picture of a dog. Clicking on "Downloads and Drivers" just takes you back to the exact same page, with that frisky dog on it, but no drivers visible. There are two (why?) search boxes on this page. Eventually I figured out that I needed to enter the name of this device (rather than just seeing support for cake decorators, etc.) and finally (I don't remember exactly how) managed to find and download the driver file. Uh-oh... it's a .rar file. My computer has no idea what to do with a .rar file. So I found a usb drive and set off to a friend who has a cd-rom, and managed to transfer the contents to the usb drive and brought it home. As instructed, I went to the folder for windows (it's actually called something complicated, not "windows" as stated in the instructions, but I did manage to figure this out) and executed the setup.exe file and it did set things up. Contrary to the setup instructions, the green-bar icon didn't appear in the system tray, however. I ran the wifi troubleshooter and it told me to connect my wifi, which I did. And now the green-bar icon does appear (but in the hidden-icon part of the system tray). OK, so far, so good. I fired up my browser and (to my surprise) I was connected to wifi and things are (knock on wood) working OK. But what a hassle!