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Scott Dillon
Sydney Australia
North Shore 38
CYCA
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Looked at Quickertech and their marine wifi looks ideal, but is out of our price range at a thousand dollars and there is no provision for return if it doesn't work out well. From their disclaimer it sounds like they were burned by some returns in the past.
Mark
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I looked in to Qickertec - seemed like the package they suggested was only about $500. What exactly did they suggest for you?
Pat
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We visited the Port Networks office since they are right here in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. A tech guy demonstrated their products and answered all our questions. Ended up buying a MWB-200 with the 12 volt Power over Ethernet injector for $399. Set it up this afternoon and we're getting all kinds of signals that the mac wouldn't pick up before. It is a small, seailed box that can be mounted on the deck and only the Cat5 ethernet cable needs to run to it. Since we're still "enjoying" the remnants of TS Ernesto here we haven't even put it outside and we're getting good signal. The unit is platform agnostic and we tried it with both our 17" powerbook and the Toshiba Satellite. The configuration utility didn't like Safari, but it worked fine with Firefox. There is a 30 Money Back Guarantee, so we'll try it out around the bay for a few weeks. Can upgrade the antenna if needed, but so far, so good.
Mark
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Scott Dillon
Sydney Australia
North Shore 38
CYCA
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I bought a Quickertek antenna for my MBP, and I have to say I'm not all that impressed, for the following reasons:
Build quality is poor (looks like a standard cheap plastic case from RS, and mines distorted).
My instructions were a poorly printed sheaf of A4 paper that had obviously been used by someone else, with various scribbles here and there.
The supplied software on CD-R was poorly organised into badly named folders, with filenames that didn't correpond with those given in the instructions.
The instructions themselves were a bit unclear in places.
The unit does seem to work in as far as relaying an airport signal, but mine has no affect on reception strength or quality.
The supplied charger was a US model, 110v, so useless in the UK - a pretty basic error for an electronics company to make.
And, worst of all in my view, is that when I emailed them in mid-August with these issues they didn't reply.
Buying in the UK also means paying a fairly hefty import duty as well.
If I get a decent response from Quickertek support I'll let you know, to set the record straight, but at the moment I wouldn't recommend them.
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I've now had a reply from a tech support guy at Quickertek, who was very apologetic for the delay, and also fairly helpful in answering most of my queries.
I'm still not convinced of the product quality, or of the effectiveness in terms of actually boosting the wireless signal by all that much, but I probably need to try it out more thoroughly. My lack of understanding of wi-fi aerial technology probably isn't helping me - it could be that a better antenna would be worthwhile.
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This has turned out to be an expensive experiment. Mine has now given up - the lid popped off while I was using it as the batteries had decided to overheat and expand to about 3 times their correct size. This explains my earlier comment about the distorted case (above).
I'm going to email a picture to Quickertek. I don't want a replacement - it'll cost me another £50 import tax.
I can honestly say that it never once made any difference to internet access - if my laptop could get a connection it would do so, if it couldn't, the Quickertek could'nt either.
A total waste of time and money.
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I tried Quickerteck too - Total loss of $. I then switched to the Portnetworks device. Hey! this one is the "hot lick" - it works!!! No PCMCIA card, no Drivers. It plugs into your ETHERNET port and it gets everything. But it dosen't like Safari but Firefox handels it perfectly. This outfit has figured out the Wi-fi for us sailors. Portnetworks.com .
