Customer Reviews

Hawking HWUN3 Hi-Gain USB Wireless-N Adapter with Upgradeable Antennas for Mac & PC (White)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have my desktop close to my router but there is a wall in the way that would give me a very poor wi fi signal, I would only achieve two or maximum three bars in the internet access icon on my pc. I bought a linksys usb and it improved a little but not good enough to take advantage of my high speed internet access. After I moved up to windows seven, it was even worse. I decided to solve the problem once and for all and started searching on tne web for forums related to my problem. In the windows seven compatibility list I found out Hawkings was the best choice and then googled it to read excellente reviews. I purchased this Hawking product and installed it very easily. Since then i have the best signal at home, 5 bars on my internet icon. The only thing I recommend is that it if you are using two pcs connected to the same router via wifi, the pc that doesnt have the hawking antennae will have a bad connection, since the hawking is so good that it takes most of the router's signal. I highly recommend this product i was seriously thinking of relocating my pc in another place or even relocating my router to be next to my pc but then i found this wonderful antennae. Just great.

WOW, so tiny yet so powerful..... i saw NO other way to catch wii fii ... came on a packet box, plugged it in and worked ever sense !!... HIGHY recommend this item... having the "N" feature made all the difference !! ... I was able to attach a remote external antenna, was able to pick up traffic as far as ten miles away !!! ... then decided that the antenna that came with the unit is fine enough... LOVE this and YOU will TOO !!

COULD NOT believe the AMAZON price either.... we spent over two hundred on other comparable products to test, yet after seeing this little bundle of power, took them all back.

The Hawking HWUN3 Hi-Gain USB Wireless-N adapter with upgradable antenna works great with my Apple Macbook and with my friends PC laptop. Hooked it to a Cantenna to get a distant signal into a metal aircraft hangar and it works fine. The program that comes with it is also easy to use and works well. I recommend this product.

Make sure you go the website and download the drivers for Windows7. And though it is not pretty, put on the external antennai ... my signal strenght went form 11% to 57%, and the net access just flies with Wifi-G (I have not upgraded to N yet). Seems faster than my 100Mbs wired LAN!

Easy to install (make sure you turn off your Antivirus - can get in the way sometimes). And no problem with Win 7 - box claims Win7, but you really have to download the win7 driver from the website.

One of the other reviewers complained about this not being 5Ghz. True. But not Hawkings' fault. Read carefully - dual-band N is not claimed.

Overall, RF and antennae engineering is very complex. The crap that came with my HP TX2000z tablet laptop .. and this external one; night and day

I got this antenna to improve the quality of the free wireless signal at my apartment complex. Without the antenna my macbook pro (2 Ghz intel core duo) got very little signal through airport, throughput was very low, and I was constantly loosing signal. Installation of the antenna and software was as described. The software is very sophisticated and gives you a lot of information on networks, signla strength and noise. I was really happy with the improvement - it went from unusable to excellent, usable for long-distance video chat using skype.

However, it doesn't get 5 stars yet, because I had to reinstall the software after the computer stopped communicating with the card for some reason (the card and software still worked, but the apple network port stopped working). Now I'm very careful to quit the software before I disconnect the card and this seems to have worked for now. Don't expect apple set and forget it reliability though.

After returning TWO other wireless USB devices, this is the one that finally worked with Snow Leopard. I recently upgraded my 4+ year old MacBook Pro's OS and was incredibly frustrated with the lack of drivers out there. This thing is currently giving me a great connection between five walls and ~30 feet. My wireless card is very spotty and I wasn't about to throw down the $300 or so to replace it in a now ancient computer. This is way more painless than the workarounds I found on the net for less compatible devices.

Pros:
- external antenna!!!
- easy setup (Windows 7)
- wireless N (though I am using it with a wireless G set up)

Cons:
- the software utility needs periodic affirmation


I purchased this because I have not room for an internal wireless card, but need a external card that I could attach a 7dbi antenna to. This fit the bill. It is nice that it is wireless N should I ever upgrade my router. Installation was easy on Windows 7 although it keeps popping up a utility that shows the wireless status. I click "ok" and it disappears for while. It has not been annoying enough for me to try to kill yet.

The pro: signal strength did improve a little, over the internal wi-fi gear in my laptop, once I got this working.

Cons. First of all, any USB device that sticks straight out of a laptop, with no cable, is a device that's begging to be bumped, warping the device's USB plug and possibly damaging the laptop. There's no reason not to include a USB M/F extension cable in to solve this problem. Even a couple inches of cable between a device and the jack would help. With an antenna sticking up inviting extra contact from your hands, you can expect some damage eventually. It might be ideal for desk system which doesn't get moved around.

Secondly, on Windows 7, it took a lot of fiddling before I could get it to remember the access key to either wireless network in my house, and switching between them doesn't work using the usual Windows interface; you have to run their utility and get to the profile tab to make the switch. That's just wrong.

Finally... the added gain doesn't amount to much. They have better antennas for this thing; for the price, one of those better antennas should be in the box.

To get 5 stars, it should have a usb cable, give a bigger boost, and above all, you should be able to stick it in, specify the access keys once, and be off and running.

Not strongly recommended unless you are somewhat tech-savvy, and careful.

Addendum: Tried updating the drivers to the Windows 7 version. No improvement.

Addendum: Dropping this to 2 stars. The software it comes with runs all the time, stealing a few percent of the CPU even when the unit is not plugged in. There's no excuse for that; it's that much less time your laptop gets on a battery. Also, when you compare the price and functionality to the Alfa 1 USB antenna (also available from Amazon), this thing looks like a terrible deal. I notice that many of the great reviews this thing got include antennas that didn't come with the unit. ANY wifi device will do well with a decent antenna, especially one mounted outside.

This is an excellent product. It works very well. The install can be confusing. On Snow Leopard if you click on the "Start Here" icon it may complain if you don't have rosetta installed. Instead of installing rosetta, or clicking on the "Start Here" icon... open the MacDriver folder. Inside that folder there are folders for different iterations of OS X. Open the folder for Snow Leopard and click on the mpkg to install the software. After installing the software restart the computer. When the computer comes back up you will find the HWUN3 software in the Hawkings Wireless Utility folder in Applications. You can then follow the instructions in the booklet to configure your connection. If the mac pops a window up saying there is a new adapter found when you plug the usb adapter in... go to the network pref pane... make sure the adapter is highlighted on the right hand side and then click apply.

One other glitch to mention is the Authentication. If you happen to type the password incorrectly when authenticating to the wireless router, the connection software on the mac doesn't let you know that it failed to authenticate. The mac will either get an 169.x.x.x address or the software will display disconnected. If this happens, edit your profile and make sure that the password or key was entered correctly.

The adapter works perfectly. No problems with signal strength. I would give have given it a perfect 5 stars if the install wasn't so confusing. Great product!! This is the first time that I have used this brand of networking equipment, and I am very glad that I did.

Boosted my wireless signal from 1 bar to 4 bars. Router is located on the floor above, about 35 feet away from computers. Purchased 2 HWUN3 antennas, one for main computer and the second for my wife's laptop. Both work well.