Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I would like to start off by saying I have made a ton of purchases (at least 50+ in the last 3 years) from Amazon (love them). I have only returned two other items of all those orders. Those were due to wrong purchasing the wrong size for clothing (my fault). We needed to extend our WiFi signal recently due the new tablets my wife and I got for Christmas. I bought my wife an iPad 2, and she got me a 7" Kindle Fire HD. Since we both use our new tablets in our bedroom mostly (weakest signal), it was time to strength the signal. I was debating between getting a new router to replace our current D'Link 655 (A4, Firmware 1.35) or just getting an repeater/extender. I decided after doing a little research that a repeater/extender would do the job, and this would allow us better signal through the house. So my experience, Setup It is true from other reviews the setup is rather easy. You take out the repeater, install the antennas, connect the repeater directly into your home PC with the cable provided, and then power up the repeater. From there just key in the IP address (192.168.1.240) follow the steps. Super easy, I was connected in about 5 minutes. I will give the company credit for this process, excellent work here. Signal After the setup, I unplugged repeater from my PC, and set it up down the hallway. It was actually not that far from the router, 15 feet maybe. The repeater powered up and boom picked up the router immediately. I monitored the signal from D'link setup screens roughly for an hour. The Signal was 100% constant, 117 Rate Mbps. I was ecstatic, couldn't wait to connect my Kindle. Here is where the problems started, so I try connect my Kindle, and it keeps telling me authentication has failed. Not sure what was going on, I could see signal. I go ahead and unplug the repeater, leave it for about 15 seconds, and plug it back in. The Kindle finally connects. Once the Kindle is connected the signal is crazy good. I start testing with the app they recommend to download to my cellphone. Reads dBs, and lets you know how strong the signal is from a location. So I start walking around the house, stopping at random locations all over, and my dBs is constant -40 to -44. The bedroom was -41, which according to the app and a little research is really good. I am satisfied so far at this point with my purchase. Usage Here are where all the problems are, the repeater despite giving great signal, and easy setup it drops connection after a while. Sometimes 20 minutes, 30 minutes, longest before dropping was an hour. I would have to go unplug the repeater and plug it back in. I must of did this 7 or 8 times in a 5 hour span on the first day of usage. I keep checking the settings, did several resets on the repeater to make sure I had followed all the instructions, and ended up with the same result. At this point I am not blaming the repeater, I figure it must be a setting. So of course, I go and research to see if I can resolve the problem. After reading several different forums on people with identical issues using repeaters, I take some of the solutions and apply them. Upgraded my firmware from 1.21 to 1.35 Verified I was using a 2.4 GHz frequency Made sure the channel with broadcasted in 20 MHz as recommended on Amped's website. Assigned a static IP to the repeater Assigned static IPs to other devices just to make sure there was no IP conflicts Assigned static channels, used 4,5 as recommended(only my router and repeater where on those channels.) (1,6, &11 were poor according to Amped app) Reset the settings on the repeater after each of the changes listed above. The list might not look long, but this takes a while since the repeater has to be reinstalled each time a setting changes on your router. So despite the effort listed above, the same result, 15 minutes to an hour it would disconnect from the router. It will NOT reconnect to the router after it loses connection. You have to unplug the repeater each time and plug it back in to get the signal back up. And actually with some of those changes my connection speed improved when it was up. At this point I am exhausted and frustrated over the last two days. So I come back to Amazon as a final shot and start reading all the reviews from new to old in hopes I might catch lighting in a bottle. I went through 30 + pages of reviews on this product (yes I really read that many). I started noticing a trend. There were a ton of other reviewers who were having the same issue. 40+ 1 star reviews mostly verified amazon buyers. As I am sure many buyers like myself look at those ratings to help decide if they are going to make the purchase or not. Now if the the rating is inflated, that's shame on me for not doing a better job researching this item. But I wanted something quick for our new toys in the house. Saw this highly ranked item and went for it. I really REALLY wanted this item to be the solution, but I can't see myself ever recommending this item to someone. I am not sure at this point if I can buy another Amped Wireless product. I do apologize about the long review, but as you can tell I am pretty frustrated with this product. I will be returning this item ASAP. PS Amped Wireless I see you respond to all negative feedback with to contact you. Don't bother I won't be spending any more time with this product.