D-Link DWA-160 Xtreme N Duo Dualband Draft 802.11n USB Adapter Reviews

• Complete JUNK

  
  By A1CGKWKG28NW71 on 2008-08-02
  I purchased this adapter to go with my D-Link DGL-4500 (a fabulous router, BTW). The range on this thing is TERRIBLE. If you plan on purchasing this for the use of the 5ghz frequency over 802.11n, save your money and wait for something else to come along. Unfortunately, this is one of the few USB dual-band capable adapters on the market and all of them are equally as weak.
  
  I tried using the 5ghz band and literally after I left the room (probably 20ft from the router), the signal went to 1 bar. In fact, I never could get a full strength signal from this adapter, 5ghz or 2.4ghz. So, D-Link is charging $75 for an item with dual-band capability, yet it's essentially worthless unless you feel it's worth the money to spend on a weak, sub-par 2.4ghz adapter; which is what this is once you take away the 5ghz frequency.
  
  Hopefully somewhere down the road a company like Hawking, who makes by far the best antennas, will make a high-powered dual-band adapter. Until then, save your money.
  
  This is getting returned.
  
  

• DWA-160

  
  By A2FPOOQFDQSB6T on 2008-05-30
  It's been about a month since I have been using the DWA-160. I am pleased with it's performance. I really like the USB capability. I can run it on my desktop or use it on my laptop. I also like the included USB adapter. It makes placement flexable. Overall a great product.
  
  

• New hardware is Vista Certified, Use Ralink Drivers for Rev B

  
  By A3FCF2LXGNML5O on 2008-08-02
  Ignore the earlier post about this adapter not working well with Vista. Dlink now supplies Rev B hardware which is Vista Certified. I got mine from local store in July and all parts should be Rev B (Ralink chipset) moving forward.
  
  I have a great connection through two walls and quite far from my router. If you have a bad router than this adapter isn't going to fix it.
  
  Make sure you use the drivers from Ralink, they write the drivers and have most up to date code. Uninstall the older Dlink drivers first and download Ralink drivers here: http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support.html
  
  

• Couldn't possibly have been so simple!

  
  By A1VS1LL905P5L5 on 2008-09-07
  Like most DIYers and pseudo-geeks, I've learned that all "quick upgrades" are really Trojan horses; nervous breakdowns in a box. Days later and exhausted on the floor from error messages, tech guys with foreign accents saying that rebooting will fix everything after a 2 hour wait on a telephone cue before your call gets cut off mysteriously. So I usually take a week off, put on a sweat band and have sedatives in reach. I did due diligence and found this product to have relatively good reviews so picked it up. (Sorry Amazon, this one time Best Buy actually had a better price!) My home network connects a Tivo, SlingBox, Vista Laptop, voip telephone, all-in-one printer via an Apple Airport Extreme hub. This D-Link was to try to cut the wires on my XP desktop to distance the spaghetti of wires from external hard drives etc. and a tethered printer. OK, those details aside, I installed the drivers via the supplied CD, chose the "manual" installation choice, typed in the name of my network and security password....."great Scott, Marty"....it was on line in an instant! OK, this should be the norm in installing things. But we all know when it does happen, shock and awe wash over us like the "08" Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. My chin is back off the floor and life is returning to normal. What to do with all the time I cleared to do this? Maybe go to the beach. Oh wait, hurricane Ike will be here tomorrow. Well, I'll savor the moment and hope my house doesn't blow away and take my network with it. Highly recommended.
  
  
  
  
  

• It works with Vista 64

  
  By A2PEX82XHO04OF on 2008-09-11
  I originally bought the xtreme wireless n desktop card, and then I read a butt load of negative reviews saying that it was going to crash my vista. I just got a brand new gateway fx computer so I wasn't going to take any chances. I returned it before installing it and picked this up. So far it works great with my new machine. I didn't even need to download any special drivers. Just the install disk worked fine. If you go to the vista compatibility website, they confirm it is vista compatible. Now I'm surfing in style. Next test: see how well I can play battlefield 2 online with this sucker.
  
  
• Not up to my expectations
  By A2PFWQVSFKCFGF on 2008-11-11
  I have upgraded my network to the N draft standard and all of my components are d-link. I am very happy with their performance - I have a dir-655 router, Xtreme N PCI Express Desktop Adapter for my PC and a Xtreme N Duo High-Definition MediaBridge for my devices in the media center (PS3, DVR, etc). (I switched from previously using linksys N products which had terrible performance.) I purchased the DWA-160 USB adapter for my laptop and it is a huge disappointment. The reception and performance are lousy. Even when I place my laptop 10 feet away from my d-link DIR-655 router, I only get 3 bars and file copies or media downloads are much slower then on my PC that is 3 times farther in a different room. I would recommend not purchasing this device.
  
  
• Completely Unstable on Vista/ Crashes System
  By AX7317G153T8W on 2008-05-11
  I tried to use this adapter and was lured by its fast speeds, and while it is a great unit while it works, in most cases it only works about 10 minutes before it hangs your applications, forces a restart at which point a extrodinarily long wait ends in a blue screen of death saying "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE".
  
  This device caused me lots of trouble (including a reinstall of my operating system) and the replacement unit the RMA department sent has the same problem, so it appears to be an issue with the whole product line.
  
  Apparently there is a revision B DWA-160 that may or may not fix the bugs, but I suppose I may never know, since the RMA department replaced my completely unusable revision A unit with another revision A piece of junk.
  
  I went back to my old Netgear wireless G adapter for now, and while the speed is slower, at least it doesn't bring Windows to a literally crashing halt!
  
  
• Super fast network adaptor
  By A3FENJQDW069I4 on 2008-08-14
  Great product. I have a HTPC running Wingows Vista Ultimate 64-bit that I needed a wireless network connection. You can forget about finding any internal wireless adapter cards that will work with the 64-bit versions of Windows. This USB adapter works great. It has no conflicts with the 64-bit operating system and is fast enough to run DVD quality video from my main computer and plays streaming video from Netflix with no problems.
  
  To get the fast speed of the 802.11n band you must also have an 802.11n band wireless router. My router is the D-Link DIR-655.
  
  My HTPC has an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor with 4GB RAM.
  
  
• Software Not Ready For Prime-Time
  By A25WJCAP606YMP on 2008-11-04
  Let me start off by saying that I replaced my D-Link DIR-655 router with this DIR-825 (firmware 1.2) and combined it with a D-Link DWA-160 USB Adapter RevB1 (software 2.2). I really wanted to like this router combo, but there are too many issues with the 5GHZ portion to recommend this as of now. The signal strength on the 5GHZ portion is only about 1/2 that of the 2.4. At about 10 feet, I could copy a media file at about 14 Mps on 5GHZ. At about 40 feet with a story in-between, it then drops to about 5Mps. At 80 feet and 2 stories, the 5GHZ signal is no more. You must use the D-Link software to use the 5GHZ channel (which is fine unless you swap to the 2.4GHZ due to range). Then it requires a system re-boot to get back the superfast speed on 5GHZ. Without a reboot, the router performs just like it was at 2.4. I expect that the software and firmware for these two items will improve with time, but at this point I cannot say that it is stable enough to justify the premium price for dual channel technology.
  
  
• D-Link DWA -160 Review...
  By A2BA81S0BKYE86 on 2008-11-11
  The D-Link DWA-160 isn't really a bad product, however, the range is terrible. I use it about 20 feet from my wireless router and I can barely get 3 bars. the sad part is, the wireless router is also a top of the line D-link router (DGL-4500). All I can say is that it works but, keep in mind, if your using it further than 20 feet and you don't have a range booster, you may not get max performance.
  
  
  
  

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