A non-tech review of the D-Link Wireless Range Extender

I’m not a tech guy.  Recently we had two tech issues that challenged me and provided the perfect testing opportunity for the D-Link Wireless Range Extender, the DAP-1320.  It was such a perfect testing opportunity that it’s possibly they sabatoged our internet and planted the idea to move our office to the other end of the house.  Did the D-Link do the trick?

The D-Link Wireless Range Extender works really effortlessly.  I just plugged it into a wall outlet, pushed the button on the side and watched the light flash.  It’s working!  But is it really working?  I mean, it could be like those computers on Star Trek that turn, blink and do all manner of showy things, but don’t really do anything.

The first test came when our internet provider accidently cut the cord in our yard.  Ooops, we cut the cord to your internet and television, but we can’t come out for 5 days to fix it, our bad.

Unfortunately for us we had three twitter parties, multiple posts and dozens of cat videos that had to be watched.  With our internet not working, we loaned the D-Link Wireless Range Extender to our neighbor.  They plugged it into their house and were kind enough to share their wireless password with us & boom-we could borrow their signal for the next couple of days.

I know that the D-Link is not designed for purposes like that.
Thankfully we were about to move our office to a new part of the house which would present entirely new challenges for streaming television.  The old location of our office was beside the living room and that 10 foot trip was simple for the wireless signals.  The new location of the office was upstairs, on the other side of the house.

We stream all of our television and cut the cord to said company that ironically cut our internet cord the other week.  The cord that controlled our cable was cut a couple years ago and we’ve been streaming large ever since then.

However, Handy Manny was not streaming.  He was sometimes showing up in the Netflix menu, streaming slowly and our children were not happy.  After a brief panic I moved the D-Link Wireless Range Extender to another outlet upstairs Handy Many was back to teaching our kids simple Spanish lessons about home improvement and friendship.

The D-Link Wireless Range Extender is $29.99 and really works.  With today’s technology we’re gun shy to try products that may not appear to do anything.  This is far from the Twiki of computer accessories.  If you’re devices are slow or not streaming as they should just plug it into an outlet and let it do its simple, flashing magic.