Do wifi booster range extender antennaes really work?

Thanks for that link Searching, but that's the DIR 615 C1. I have the DIR 615 B1. The changed the hardware between the A1/B1 and C1 versions

 

I have....and they work well.

I recently completed a "budget" project for a nursing home with a very small IT budget. They had to get a wireless network setup covering all the bed areas..2x floors, 5x long hallways on each floor. I utilized 10x APs.

A quote for doing this project with Aruba hardware would have been $14K. A slightly lower budget doing it with HP ProCurve access points would have been over $8K. They couldn't afford that. So I did the project using 10x Linksys/Cisco wrt54GL routers, running on PoE injectors, using these 9dB long hi gains. I flashed all the wrt54GL routers with DD-WRT firmware.
http://www.fab-corp.com/product.php?productid=3069&cat=282&page=1
http://www.fab-corp.com/home.php

Total cost for the hardware was around $1600.

The DD allows you to increase the output power of the APs...you can dial it up to 250 or something..but it's documented in many places that it's not worth it going about 85....as distortion kicks in too much (much like turning your stereo volume way up too high...sounds crummy when the speakers cannot handle peak output power of your stereo)

 

Just a little update, I finally got my hands on those range extender antennas I ordered. It didn't do anything for range or speed. I think I'm seeing a degradation of my range actually

Now I'm gonna try getting my hands on a DD-WRT compatible router and seeing if I boost the signal strength what happens.