The Fritz! USB Stick is a wireless USB connection for your Windows machine however this device is set well apart from the average Wi-Fi device.
The Fritz! brand is well known for its value packed rooter offerings, the Fritz! Box 7390 rooter has received many reviews praising its feature set and has won various awards for its innovative technology and functionality, the Fritz! Stick - as an accessary - builds on this innovation and functionality. I have a Fritz! Box and wanted to extend my Wi-Fi network to several machines here that didn't have any network connectivity so thought the Fritz! Stick would be the easy way to do this, the price for these was quite reasonable at £25.00 each so I ordered 2, always handy to have a spare around. I was pleasantly surprised to see that each Fritz! Stick was well packed in a small cardboard box, the last Wi-Fi USB stick I bought several years ago came in one of those hideous sealed packages that seem to require a chain saw to open. Packaging it simple yet elegant, there's the Fritz! Stick itself, a dock to stand the fRitz! Stick in, printed documentation and a CD ROM containing drivers and extra user guides. So after unpacking one of the Fritz! Sticks I thought it time to "Dive Right in", according to the information I had at hand the Fritz! Stick was supposed to accept all the security settings from my Fritz! Box and use these for connection when the stick was plugged into a Windows computer so I plugged the stick into the USB port on the Fritz! Box, waited for half an hour, plugged the Fritz! Stick into the USB port on a Windows machine here and hoped for the best. The install worked flawlessly and security settings were indeed transferred to the Windows machine from the Fritz! Stick and the computer connected automatically to my home Network so no need for me to enter security keys, figure out what method of security to use work out which network to join and so on. Having connected 1 machine I thought I'd try connecting another to the Wi-Fi network using the other Fritz! Stick I'd ordered and here's where things became a little tricky. It seemed that the network data wasn't transmitted to the Fritz! Stick as easily as it was for the first stick I'd used, the drivers etc were installed from the second stick to the second machine and a "Connection Wizard" was then executed, I didn't expect this. The wizard asks for your Wi-Fi data, you can use "WPS" mode to transfer the data automatically - if your rooter has this facility - or you can enter it manually, I chose to enter the data manually. The Wizard is accessible enough though you'll need skill in using the JAWS cursor to get around it and click on the appropriate items you use. Once the data was entered the Stick connected to the Wi-Fi network so it was then a matter of selecting the Fritz! Stick from the "Network Adapter" list under Windows. So how to know if the data from your Fritz! Box has been transmitted successfully to your Fritz! Stick? Well if you have no vision then there's absolutely no way of knowing, you'll just have to wait and take your chances but if you have vision then you'll see a light on the front of the Fritz! Box start flashing red whilst data is transmitted to the Stick, the light colour will change to Green once transmission is complete and fritz! Stick is ready to be unplugged from the Fritz! Box and connected to your Windows computer. So you don't have a Fritz! Box? That's no problem as you can still use the Fritz! Stick with any 2.4 or 5.0GHZ Wi-Fi network and here's where the CD ROM accompanying the stick comes in, the disc contains the full set of drivers for versions of Windows XP upwards. I've only had the Fritz! Stick for 2 days so I've not been able to do much testing but I can tell you that the stick certainly out perform the built-in Wi-Fi of my Asus netbook computers here. You can feel the antennas on the Fritz! Stick, 1 either side of the device. I like the idea of the Dock, the Fritz! Stick stands in this whilst the cable coming out of the dock plugs into a USB port on your Windows machine, having a dock like this can make all the difference to Wi-Fi coverage. The Fritz! Stick is a USB 2.0 device but can be used on USB 1.1 ports, note that throughput will be very slow indeed if the stick is used with USB 1.1 So now all the machines here are connected to my home network and whilst a wired network is my preferred option there can be no doubt that a Wi-Fi network is a lot cheaper. At £25.00 per Fritz! Stick then giving 2 machines access to my network was a bargain and a time saver as I could use the Fritz! Box to transmit the Wi-Fi data to the Fritz! Stick. ********** Dane Trethowan Skype: grtdane12 Phone US (213) 438-9741 Phone U.K. 1245 79 0598 Phone Australia (03) 9005 8589 ======================================= To post to this group, please send your message to: [email protected] The Windows-Access E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit your personalise subscriber options page, located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/windows-access You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Windows-Access forum at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/windows-access/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- [email protected]
