Media for Hawking 8db gain Dish woes.

Hawking 8db gain Dish woes.

Ok. I purchased one of these silly 50s sci-fi looking adapters to see if I could lock onto more wi-fi routers in my neighborhood; I was going to go with a cantenna but I didn't want to buy a new PCI card and pigtail.

This is the dish

formatting link

So, I hooked it up to my computer which has a cheap Wireless B PCI card. Normally, I get about 7 or 8 neighborhood wireless networks and can connect to them sometimes with "Very Good" or "Excellent" signal readings. My own Wireless B router usually comes in "Excellent."

I was expecting to see more networks and pull better signals from the preexisting networks (routers) with this dish, but after installing the driver and using its networking configuration software, I found that all I could get is "Low" "Very Low" and rarely "Good" signals.

The dish should have a 8db gain. I tried pointing it in all directions and angles...outside my windows...but this thing would not get any additional router signals and when it found the older signals it didn't connect very well. The cheap wireless B PCI card did much better without having to aim it.

I've contacted their tech support...and the thing might be defective, but am I missing something here?? Do these "gain" antennas only connect to networks that are normally out of the distance of typical wi-fi adapters and do little to lock onto to closer signals? One would expect that these kind of dishes would be useful in determining from which direction a signal is coming from...especially with built in signal locator LEDs.

This Hawking dish is a big let down. Its supposed to be Plug and Play. Any input would be much appreciated.

Don