Perhaps it wasn't the old one that broke? And the issue is with the box itself and this is as "good as it gets" with that brand because of drivers etc....
Nah, the old one physically broke. It's about 5 or 6 years old, and I have these slanted USB ports on top of my PC that are at like a 45 degree angle... So the device sticks up at that angle. A number of times my cat had jumped on top of my PC. It's been bending the USB plug for years, though it still stayed soldered to internals of the USB wifi adapter until recently. The one I ordered was the exact same model, so technically I'd imagine it'd work just as the previous one did prior to it breaking. I've not really had time to diagnose it yet. I'll reinstall the drivers, I'm thinking maybe I goofed something up when trying to get the wifi-adapter from the Windows PC to work properly on my Linux box and likely did... something. <shrugs>
theres always something to do.