The adapter was operational after not quite five minutes. Driver I have not from the included CD (which I never do, because usually out of date) but directly from the manufacturer under [...] loaded. The manufacturer was determined by means of search engine fix after the Device Manager has identified the machine as AX88179.
The driver was then installed quickly and easily. Copying a 1GB large file over the network managed with the USB adapter twelve times faster than via a fast wireless connection.
The computer used was a Dell XPS Duo 12 with a 64-bit version of Windows. 8