Off overseas! Wifi yagi

[pepsilol]

Well I am going overseas again.

I have a macbook air and just came back from Europe. Now all the hotels had wifi and my macbook air picked most of these signals up okish, not amazingly well, it was very weak and sometimes I just had to go downstairs to the lobby.

There were quite a few scenarios where I would get very weak/no signal but my friends HP laptop would get it just fine!

I am thinking for this trip to take a USB Wifi adapter and not to use the one built into my mac as it is clearly not that good when it comes to stretching out a bit.

Looking into the dongle lead me into Yagi arials.

Now I have found one :

500mW WiFi Wireless USB Adapter & 16dBi Yagi Antenna


What are the situations with these, is it a scam? Do they work? Would they work in my scenario? Any tips or pointers.

The one I am looking at comes with an Aerial, then it has a smp cable that goes to a dongle, then from the dongle the usb comes to the laptop..

Some just have aerials and the sma cable, then I assume I have to buy a usb adapter that will screw into that sma cable .

 

[PistolPete]

Assuming it's an Alfa style adaptor then yes, they do work very well.

I've got an 800mW Alfa and a yagi and I can pick up the wifi on a caravan park around 1 mile away. Signal is pretty weak and it's line of sight, but it works.

You use a regular USB to mini USB to the adaptor, then there is an SMA (or reverse SMA I forget which is which) and then the Yagi has a small section of co-ax running from it.
A word of warning though, dont be tempted to get any cheap co-ax extensions as they zap the signal. I had a 15ft extension cable that came with my yagi and it was RUBBISH.
Keep the cable as short as possible.

 

[pepsilol]

Well I have semi hit a wall with this as I am running osx 10.8 and usb dongles don't come easy...I am going to have to pop over to the apple section to find a dongle.