On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 06:25:36 -0800, Amanda Riphnykhazova wrote:

Or does it depend on careful setting up, positioning stability
(surely the antenna can't move?) and directionality when in use!!

Yes. You are correct. My results depend on reasonable aiming.

Here is a picture of my ubiquiti feed horn and wires:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3667/1...aa12eba3_o.jpg

That is a 23dBM radio with a 3dBi antenna, which, if you find that
kind of gain in consumer equipment at any price, I'll be amazed.

That's 26dBm of gain, which is 400 milliwatts of power (EIRP).

Now look at these four screenshots, taken during my testing:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2826/1...09969676_o.png
Notice the signal strength with the tail pointed toward the
router was a whopping -38dBm! (that's huge!)

When I tested it, at my house, connected to my laptop ethernet port,
I pointed the tail end of this Nanobridge M2 at the home broadband
router from one floor away, and got fantastic signal strength,
which you can also read on the unit itself by user-settable LEDs:
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5527/1...e72406a8_o.jpg

When I pointed the tail *away* from my router, it still had
a connection strength of -61dBm, and, as I twisted the nanobridge
feedhorn around, I obtained values in between.

Now, let's compare that to the Lenovo laptop, which has a high
end Intel Centrino N-spec WiFi card:
$ lspci
SHOWS: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)

$ iwconfig
SHOWS the NIC has 15dBm transmit power. At 2.4GHz, that gets me
a respectable -54dBm as shown by the results below:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7295/1...a89983fe_o.jpg

Let's summarize:

1. The business-class laptop has a 15dBm NIC with probably about
1/2 dBi to (at most) 1dBi integral antenna, for a gain of
about 16dBm; it garnered a signal strength of -54dBm.

2. Turning off that WiFi NIC, and attaching the 23dBM + 3dBi
Nanobridge M2 feedhorn to the laptop Ethernet port, I get
a signal strength of -38dBm when the antenna is aimed
correctly - which is a stupendous 16dBm more signal than
with the internal laptop card. Since every 3dB is a doubling
of power, that's 2x2x2x2x2=32 times more signal strength!

3. However, with the feedhorn tail purposefully pointed AWAY from
the router, I still get a respectable signal strength of -61dBM,
but, that signal strength is four times less than what I had at
the laptop without the feedhorn.

So, yes. You are correct. The signal strength *does* depend on
aiming; but, when it's aimed right, you can easily get thirty times
the signal strength than your (high end) laptop has alone.

And, best of all, there is absolutely no need for *any* drivers!
This is more important for folks like me who are on Linux, than it
is for Windows or Mac users - but - it's still nice to know that there
are absolutely no drivers needed - since the interface is via the
standard Ethernet port of your laptop and the web interface to the
radio.

YMMV