Customer Reviews

D-Link DWA-643 Xtreme N Express Card Adapter

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The D-Link Xtreme N Express Card Adapter, so far is the only N wireless express card adapter that I have found to have the capability for both the distance and the signal response through a house with stone walls. I have bought, installed, failed to get reliable signal, and returned the Belkin and Linksys(Cisco) N wireless express card adapters. They all work, but only D-Link through stone walls.

I have read the reviews about this card. I have had one on my Vista HP laptop for 6 months now and have had no problems at all. It works flawlessly and is very fast. I don't understand why people have had problems with this card and Vista but I haven't. Sleep and hibernation problems can be caused by a number of issues. Most common is the power setup in device manager for various devices on your computer. If they are allowed to wake the computer or not can affect the way sleep and hibernation work. Anyways, all I can say is this card works for me.

The speed of this card with the D-Link N router is impressive. However, when installed on my HP laptop running Vista premium, the laptop would not shut down properly. When the card was installed, the laptop would automatically restart everytime after shutdown. The only way to stop the laptop was to force a shutdown by holding the power button down. The D-Link Vista drivers are beta only and won't install since they do not work for the DWA-643. When I emailed D-Link about the problem and that the Vista drivers were wrong they just emailed instructions on how to install the bad drivers which did not work.

This product is designed to be matched with the DIR-655 and works flawlessly with it and at a very fast clock. Transferring files over wireless were never accomplished so quickly before. This card like many other products does not ship with a good Vista driver but all you have to do is goto their website and viola!

Vista gets a bad rap as does this card, case closed.

Note: I have the corresponding Xtreme-N wirless router from DLink and am extremely happy with it. However this is my experience with this wireless adapter:

(1) Does not install properly on Vista. If you allow Windows native installation to find and install a driver for it, it installs it as 'DLink Ranger Booster' (which it is of course not). Using the installation on the accompanying CD, worked on the third attempt, but then connected to home network with networth strength of 'FAIR' compared to 'EXCELLENT' that I got with my older, built-in wirless g adapter!

(2) Copying a file from my laptop to a network folder transferred at 50kB/s; compard to 2.6 MB/s I get on my built-in wireless G adapter (that's a MB not a Mb/sec).

I am extremely disappointed that DLINK would release this with such poor driver support for Vista. I love their xtreme-N router, and was so excited about transferring files at xtreme-N speeds, but this card is pushing me a million step backwards (50kB/s compared to 2.6MB/sec). No take this card back please, thank you very much.

the item functions well enough, however the mechanical connection it makes with the xpress card slot is very poor. the card can be accidentally dislodge from the slot with the slightest nudge, and this can readily happen because the card itself sticks out of the slot well-over an inch. the card, when connected functions as expected, but seating the card and keeping it seated are a rea lhassle. therefore, I do not recommend you buy one...

I got mine as a refurb for $30 dollars, so I don't feelas though I got robbed ,but if I had paid retail price, I'd have returned this for a refund, based on it's poor mechanical, not it's good electrical capabilities .

JD

This product does not seat properly into Express card slots. As a result this adapter frequently dislodges causing network disconnects.

The Xtreme N Express Card installed with no problem, except afterward you need to go to "Connect" on your start menu, and find your home wireless network, and then click on it. The directions don't tell you to do that. Otherwise, it won't connect. Makes sense.

It had all the VISTA drivers, so it was really no problem to install, and works fine. It is defintely faster than the G connector that came installed on my laptop.

I'm very happy this this card. I have a D-Link Pre-N router (DIR-655) and the speed increase is amazing, even with only 6megs of internet to work with.

I'm very disappointed in the way this product is marketed by D-Link. While this device supports 802.11n over 2.4GHz it does NOT support 802.11n over the 5GHz frequency.

My home network uses the D-Link DIR-825 router configured with a 2.4GHz network and a 5GHz network operating simultaneously. To limit confusion, I have named one "network G" and another "network N." Because I thought that the DWA-643 may offer better performance than the USB-based DWA-160, I ordered the DWA-643 unit from Amazon. When I installed the device and drivers, I realized that the only networks the card could detect were those operating over the 2.4GHz frequency range. Terrible! The DWA-160 sees our 802.11n network operating at 5GHz AND a neighbor's newer 5GHz network.

When you look at the literature, note that the backwards-compatibility is limited to 802.11g and 802.11b. They omitted 802.11a because that operates using 5GHz. I did not catch this when I first ordered the card. I assumed that an "Xtreme" card would actually operate over "REAL" 802.11n which is 5Ghz. Someone who bought this card with the intention of migrating from a mixed 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz network to a purely 802.11n network should send the card back ASAP, as you'll be very disappointed when you disable 2.4Ghz.

No online review that I've read for this device mentions that it doesn't support anything on the 5GHz frequency. That's a real shame. It appears to connect to 802.11g over 2.4GHz with no problem, but no one should be paying $60 for a card that's stuck with 2.4GHz.

I hope that anyone else who is using an 802.11n router (with 5GHz support) reads this before purchasing this particular card. Note that I've gotten pretty good results with the DWA-160, but this review is focused on the performance of the DWA-643.