A little bit unexpected I needed an external WLAN interface for my laptop, which still runs the much dead OS Windows XP x64 (64-bit Edition). And I was really scared with the last driver madness in my mind.
Anyway I got this Ralink thing for only 15 EUR (around 20$) on eBay and I was really surprised. The device came with x64 drivers. Yessss…and it worked right after I installed them. Unbelieveable…
The performance was a little bit bad, so I grabbed the newest drivers from the Ralink website. The performance increased a bit and also the newest drivers have a great support for x64 based OS (also Vista and Windows 7).
Nearly all Ralink chipsets feature x64 compatible drivers which is – at this price level – a really cool thing. Most upper class devices only have a support for Windows 7 x64, but not for Windows XP x64 or other x64 systems.
But with all the good news about this device, there´s one thing that can´t impress as much as the rest. The antenna which should supply a +5dbi connection boost. It was really hard to notice at least a boost, but honestly there´s one, but only around +1dbi / +2dbi. If you´re on a bad coverage this antenna won´t make things better at all.
In general, you can´t do anything wrong with this device at that price and if you don´t plan to use any other OS than Windows XP x64 you won´t have much choice at all.
Update :
Well with this nice 2.4 GHZ WLAN antenna from hama I boosted my WLAN stick. It works really good. Connection raised from a low signal strength to a good and sometimes even very good signal strength. The antenna was about 18 EUR on eBay (around 25$) and can be wall mounted. It is connected via a reverse SMA plug, compatible to the Ralink WLAN stick.
