No matter how hard you try to make sure your wireless router reaches everywhere in your home or office, you’ll often have some dead spots. I’ve got a couple of dead spots in my house and I take them as a sign that I shouldn’t be using my devices in that part of the house. Ugh, now I have the Five Man Electrical Band’s song “Signs” stuck in my head.

While I’ve shrugged it off with an excuse so far, I think the time is coming for me to look into a device for extending my WiFi range. Obviously I want something that will do a good job. It should be easy to set up. Lastly, it would be nice if it were fairly compact.

The Amped Wireless High Power Compact 802.11ac Wi-Fi Range Extender (shown at right) is currently selling for $99.99 at Amazon seems to meet all of my needs. When I look at a place in my house where there is a dead spot, the best location for an extender is in a closet. That would make this model nearly invisible to anyone unless they were to go digging behind piles of dirty clothes.

How did I choose that location? First, there needs to be an outlet to provide electricity. Next, the location needs to have a decent signal to your current WiFi router. If the extender can’t get a good signal, it won’t have anything to boost. Of course you also want the location to be close to the area that is currently in a dead spot. Walking around with my smartphone and checking the signal led me to the perfect outlet hidden in the back of a closet.

I’ve not personally tested this extender, but it seems to meet all of my needs and it will likely be something I pick up in the near future. Then I have to keep telling myself that the new signal is only for having fun and not for doing more work.