I have a project coming up where a company wants me to convert their small office (7 computers) over to wireless, the range won't be terrible, and I'm sure most will connect to the router just fine. However, I'm trying to find a solution to the potential problem of a weak singal in a particular area or areas.

I'm currently considering these as a solution if the problem arises, however I'm unfamilar with the performance, and can only find a few reviews. All other solutions and similar devices jump in price by about 2x of this device. This device's antenna is 6dbi where most other usb adapters are 1-2.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...ductCode=251680

Does anyone have any experience with exceptionally better usb adapters? I mean real comparisons, not what you use and what happens to work for you.

I'm hoping I won't even have problems of course, but with all projects you have to plan for certain situations, and I just want to be covered.

Sidenote:

If anyone is familar with backup configuarations in small offices such as this, please let me know so I can chat some with you. This office is currently using a small archaic server with tape backup and they want to convert to all computer simply backing up to a usb hard drive. The only complication is that they use an access database and their peachtree software uses a portion of the server too. I'm guessing one can setup the usb drive that they want to backup to, to hold the databases.


Sidenote 2:

less than three

I hope that this is not off base here, it's only because of a few things I've read at TechRepublic, etc.

I'm just wondering why they want USB? Those things can be stolen quite easily, although you say it's a small office so I don't know if that could be an issue. I'm assuming they have a wired network? If that's true why not setup an access point? I do not know what the office looks like and what you really have access too so I'm not sure if that would work for you. Have you also considered better antenna's for the wireless router, maybe a pringles can antenna??

You should easily be able to setup the USB drive for backups also. But again I wonder why USB? Is that "server" really old?

I worked on a small office network a few months ago. The guy had his Music on a USB hard drive that was hooked up to another system in the network. It was pretty easy to setup his "My Music" folder to be directed to that remote USB hard drive.
In your case you just have to assign the USB drive a letter and share it in the network.

Drop me an email if you want and I'll talk to you about it this afternoon when I get home from work.

Thanks Steel, and I'll email you. I apologize for not being more clear to any other readers:

They are chaning offices, the new office is not wired, and instead of spending the money to wire it, they would rather spend money and go wireless. That way, they can add in new computers on the whim (temp workers is what they had brought up). They also want USB so they can easily add it themselves, instead of calling in tech support (me). They are all using windows 2000, and so everything is about 6 years or so, and the server is actually about 8. The server is running out of disk space. It has a 20gig HD, and it's partitioned 4 times, and it's just a mess really.

They also want a seperate wireless router for their clients which will be open access. It's how they have their other office in Florida setup.

NAS (network attached storage)
NASLite

Langa Letter: A Complete Terabyte File Server For About $500