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Bill Kearney Bill Kearney is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 390
Default New Marine WiFi Product

Although I have not tried this myself, it looks interesting and I may
order one. Basically it's a 9 db omnidirectional antenna integrated
with a high powered USB adapter. The advantage is that coax losses
are eliminated and you have a smaller cable coming into the boat.


Which is useless as USB is limited, at best, to 15 feet. Just getting
across a cabin, up a bulkhead and to an opening will take that much length.
And that only gets you to the deck. It's been my experience you need to get
at least 8 feet off the deck to get any sort of decent signal. At least in
anything other than a close proximity to the base situation. If you're in
the marina and it's got good coverage then the above gadget might be useful.
But if the coverage was that good you wouldn't need that gadget anyway. And
that unit is limited to USB 1.1. Too slow for wifi, but then for ****ty
coverage it might be "enough".

In short, no thanks.