They were all highly rated but suffered equally from poor reception and, worse, slow data speeds with frequent downtime (no link)

There simply is no buffering and if the data is slow, it's probably due to the other end of the signal and not the AC1900's fault.

I tried installing the latest drivers for W8.1, and the install told me that the data was incorrect.

I will be putting the slower, but reliable D-Link card back in this weekend

I'm using wireless-G and an inexpensive D-Link DI-624 router

This causes issues installing, as well as if you are tech savy enough to install it via drivers

Works as it described

Easily installed and still working fine as of summer 2014.

It's being severely bottlenecked by my internet speed, but it's going as fast as it can with low ping