Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter

Having suffered from an internal WiFi card failure on my HP laptop (a common problem on some models), I've been looking to get a economical and reliable alternative, that'd quickly and effectively get me reconnected to the online world.

My issue had been that the 'profile' of plug-in WiFi 'dongles', that all seemed to be about the same size (think about half the size of a mobile broadband dongle, and you're about there). Easily pocket size, but a larger profile meant that, realistically, they needed to be removed before moving a laptop about or packing it away.

THIS tiny lil' item takes all the worries away. I honestly can't imagine a WiFi adaptor getting that much smaller, as it only 'just' protrudes from my laptop's USB port. It's 'just enough' to be able to get a hold it on the rare occassions where I may need to remove it. I've not caught it on anything yet, so I'm more than happy to just leave it in situ'.

I've not tested connectivity away from my home hub yet, but so far everything has checked out to be just fine. Initialisation of the dongle, connection are responsive, signal strength and speed meters run right at the upper scale and are stable.

The packaging contains a basic set of (paper) installation instructions, the dongle, the (3") installation CD; and as mentioed in another review, that may cause a problem for owners of slot-loading drives.

I didn't have any issues, with the 'tray' drive on my laptop, with the installation taking only a couple of minutes; to request the disc, find the driver and complete the installation. It really was just a case of accepting a few installation steps and sitting back to let the laptop sort itself out.

There are cheaper, and probably just as effective, solutions, but I can't fault the quality or the easy of use of this great lil' item and won't hestitate in recommending this.

Just as a footnote, I've tested the installation against Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista Professional and Windows 7 Professional; and had no problems getting this installed and running.

Works perfect with my raspberry pi :)
Just make sure you run it on the direct ports and not through a hub
Just run this script: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6256 and your good togo...

I purchased this for an old laptop that had no wireless connectivity built in. The laptop is pretty old and runs an old version of Windows XP (it hadn't been connected to the internet for a couple of years so therefore was not up to date with the latest Microsoft updates). My network is modern and uses WPA2 encryption.

This network adapter is very, very tiny, protruding probably about 7mm from the socket. Installation was faultless and the only thing I needed to do was enter the network key, after which it has performed brilliantly.

I've configured and used several different types of network adapters in the past and they all seem very flakey in the way they install and work, usually giving sporadic problems and patchy coverage. This is not the case however with this adapter which seems to work faultlessly - it's so refreshing to have technology that works well!