Student Essentials - Wireless Range Extender

I have something to admit, I am one of those people who are more than a little set in their ways. Nothing demonstrates this better than my university housing record. Most students will probably start in halls before floating between landlords for the rest of their degree.

 Not me no, I found a house I liked in my first year and stayed put. I got a little adventurous during my second year. Switching rooms to one upstairs, but now for third year I am happily back in my downstairs cave. I’m happy like this, the room may be small, but its cosy and I have had good times there. Honestly, when the landlords come to get me out they will probably find me growing on the walls; a bit like the cursed crew of the Flying Dutchman from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Except hopefully, I won’t have sold my soul and my skin will have slightly less barnacles growing on it.

To demonstrate my technical know how:
 I have no idea what this is about.

The only real problem with the room is that it is a wireless dead spot. For my first year that wasn’t too bad. Yes, I was cut off from technology when I was at home. But it meant I left the house a lot more, instead of using Facebook to socialise I used my actual face! However, now that I am in my final year the workload makes a good connection a bit essential.

You may think we students spend our whole time slacking off, hell even I think that of certain students. But we do a lot of work and in this age a constant connection is needed for this. I could go back to using the uni’s facilities for work, but this means trekking to campus. This is great on nice days, let’s face it though, I live in Britain and the majority of the days it is going to be cold, wet and I’ll probably be set upon by wolves; seriously, some days you just can’t leave the house for those things.

So this year I took affirmative action, well I bought something shiny, (Firefly reference for the win!) I got myself a wireless extender, luckily Argos were having a sale and I found a few cheap(ish) options. I hammered in the code for the TP Link Wi-Fi extender or TL-WA850RE, but I call it Jeff.

As technology know-how goes I am somewhat limited. Restricted to being able to plug stuff in and pray that it does what the box tells me it will. Luckily this model has an easy set-up, which was: plug it into a spare socket, press a button on the front and on our router and then place it between said router and my room.

The difference was immediate, enough that I constructed a review for it. I can actually now have a signal throughout my cave without having the door open. Better yet, I can stream videos, whole videos, without getting hypnotised by those swirling circles. Just think with that kind of help I may be able to write my dissertation, so long as I don’t watch too many videos.

For a student like myself I have to recommend a Wi-Fi extender like this. It really is an essential for university; make sure you put one on your packing checklist. Also I recommend a packing checklist, but that’s for another post.

I’m not being paid by T.P Link and hopefully prove this by suggesting you buy any model of extender, regardless of brand. But the model I have is great, plus it comes with a three year warranty. This means that when I need a work break I can play keepy-ups with it too.

If you do find areas in your home have issues with dropping Wi-Fi then definitely give one of these a go. They are small, simple to use and usually cheaper than buying another box to re-route the signal. Definitely a student essential.

T.P Link image from PCAdvisor, Info graphic from biztech magazine