December 17, 2007

Wi-Fire Range Extender, A Wardriver's Dream?

Anyone ever try out the Wi-Fire WiFi Range Extender?

The manufacturer, hField, claims that it can allow you to "access a wireless Internet connection from up to 1,000 feet away." It is Windows and Mac compatible and only requires a USB connection.

If it is half as good as the manufacturer's claims it sounds exactly like what I need for when I'm on running around town and having trouble finding a public WiFi hotspot. For only $79.00 it might be worth a try.

What do you think? If you happen to have one please let us know how well it works in the comments.

Posted in Product Reviews & Purchases , WiFi by usrbingeek at 2007-12-17 01:02 ET (GMT-5) | 3 Comments | Permalink

Comments

I am curious to know how well this actually works. Could you do some quick tests to see how much the signal increases in real life situations?

Posted by: Sid at December 18, 2007 03:56 PM

I bought one Wi-Fire today, and I must say, it connects at very low signal rates.(other adapters are not able to connect at all)
Antenna inside the unit is no magic at all at first sign - it's a copper board yagi.
It uses cheap usb stick(z-com xg-762n to be exact) with ZyDAS chipset inside(zd1211b-qf). This chipset should be functional in Linux with full packet-injecting capability, however I had no time to test it.

Posted by: forcer at March 20, 2008 02:41 PM

Be careful when purchasing Wi-Fire, it didn’t work for me and I have sent them 4 emails and left 2 phone messages (no one ever answers the phone) trying to get a return number and they won’t respond. It’s starting to look like this is a “Fly by Night Outfit” at best.

Posted by: Tim at April 27, 2008 06:24 PM