The QuickerTek Connect promises to increase Powerbook wireless connectivity by up to three or four times the normal range.
This product works as advertised but the one I received is much larger and junkier looking than the product shown in photos. I ordered one from Small Dog but when I discovered it was backordered and that a local user group had a better deal directly through QuickerTek, I bought it from them.
In the photos on their site and around the net the back of an aluminum powerbook is shown with the Connect attached. Because the photo is black and white, it appears as if the Connect is similar in color to the powerbook. I received a beige and white cheap plastic box. The aerial is black. The USB cable is black and beige. Beige, white and black...I haven't seen any computer peripheral this ugly since the 80s. Oh, and the size. You won't find any mention anywhere about the dimensions because it's a small brick. It's 3-1/2 inches wide by 5-1/4 inches tall by 1-1/4 inches thick. It's approximately 1/5 the size of my 12" powerbook and double the size of an Airport Express.
The installation instructions are nebulous (example: copy the QuickerTek folder from the CD. But there isn't any QuickerTek folder on the CD. There's lots of folders, many of which are poorly described and several contain the same items.) There are numerous misspellings throughout the manual (gee, aren't spellcheckers built into most WP these days?), featuring words like "lessions" and "enternal," the latter meaning either internal or external, just flip a coin. Chapter 2, titled "Manually Establishing Connect-ion" has nothing to do with manually establishing a connection--it simply resummarizes Chapter 1. Step five of Chapter 2 states "This concludes the hardware installation." Huh? There's more non sequiturs but I don't have the time to list them all. Reminds me of those badly translated manuals that used to come with stereo equipment years ago.
I doubt the average consumer will have a happy experience installing this, but once set up, it does work. The 12" powerbook is notorious for poor connections. If I go out onto my porch, only 12 feet from my access point, my connection drops in and out. My studio, on the other side on my garage and about 100 feet from the AP, never worked. With the QuickerTek Connect, I get a full signal on the porch and in the distant studio with the doors closed.
The Connect comes with a bulky black power adapter, not quite a brick but large and heavy. It also draws power via the supplied USB cable. But if my laptop is on battery, it sucks juice twice as fast with the QuickerTek Connect attached via USB.
One bonus is that the QuickerTek Connect can operate like an independent access point so my wife and I can both use our laptops within its proximity. I also have an Airport Express but the express always has problems with my verizon DSL modem. Not so with the QuickerTek.
But for a $200 retail price, it's not yet ready for prime time. It needs a higher quality case, a smaller size, and an edited manual. If those things don't matter, I can recommend the hardware. It works great.
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