Router redux
January 3rd, 2008So, yesterday’s router troubles only grew this morning. 4 second uptime, tops - progressively worse than the 4 minute between resets I was experiencing last night. The Linksys wireless router was in its death throes - I should have seen it coming…
Throwing dollars at the problem seems to have helped, as I walked away from my local Best Worst Buy with a Netgear SuperG Wireless Router. Set-up was ridiculously straight-forward. The Netgear-supplied CD wizard actually worked on a Mac - gasp! - something that I could never say about Linksys, who still appear to view the Mac platform as supporta nongrata. Suffice to say, I’m impressed with Netgear.
At least for now.
Time will tell, as it always does, as to whether this device is in for the long haul…
-Krishna
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Netgear’s customer service rocks also if you ever need to call them! We had a glitch with our router recently and after playing with everything I could think of, going online and seeing if I could find someone else with the problem, I finally broke down and called customer support. Remembering first off that this router was bought in the summer of 2004, so it is almost 4 years old.
The first lady was awesomely polite, and when she couldn’t help me she sent me to her supervisor who was even -more- awesome. Turned out that for some reason the ‘automatic’ detection of the IP address wasn’t working. He walked me thru setting up a manual one (including a drop to DOS using the run command LOL) and had me back up and running with both laptops. I was impressed as my system is a little unusual in that we don’t keep a computer hooked up to the router…. we have 2 laptops (currently 3, but that’s a long story!) that only connect wirelessly. He never even blinked!
My current system is a ‘g’, but I’ve been watching the ‘n’ specs, and as soon as they are finalized I think I will upgrade. And I will definitely be upgrading to a new Netgear router!!
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Apple’s own networking kit is just as well designed and hassle free as they’d have you believe. I sold a friend my 2004 Airport Express which is still working just fine with his Leopard MacBook today, upgraded to 802.11n with an Airport Extreme, and impressed my brother enough with it on sight for Apple to score another sale in days.
Never had one glitch in going on four years of uptime. And the software interface is in another zone, compared to even the better 192.168.1.1 UI’s out there.
Won Ars Technica’s 802.11n shootout too.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/airport-n.ars/4
I know your pain from my own cheapskating days in 2002-2004 when we went through at least 4 routers. Never again.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I was actually considering an Apple Airport Extreme - up until today actually. I went to the Apple Store and held one in my hands. Then I walked over to one of the iMacs on display and read the reviews on Apple’s own Store site. Lots of negative comments. That, and the price - spooked me from getting the Airport Extreme. Glad to hear that yours is rock solid though, John!