Rating: Summary: Good Stable Router Review: I just got this router (WGR614v2) today, installed it in like less than 45 mins. It's been pretty stable till now and on my HP Pavilion notebook with integrated 802.11b wireless shows all bars on my signal strength. Connecting through the Setup Wizard was a breeze. Though I knew exactly what needed to be done, I think the setup process is pretty simple. Updated the flash firmware upgrade from the netgear website (chose the stable as opposed to the beta version). I have also setup the 128 bit encryption with MAC filtering enabled. My old router which was an SMC barricade used to crib about when the encryption was enabled. Considering that it's only 4 hrs old, I will update the status soon to let you folks know how it's going on. Regarding the installation, seems like I got lucky like most others. From the reviews looks like some of them have had problems.
Rating: Summary: Easy to Install.. but Software still has bugs. Review: Hi All Netgear Users.This was my first Netgear's router & wireless pc card (both 802.11g)installation, but it was easy! The router comes with short, easy-to-follow installation directions. It hardly takes 10-minutes to open the box, read the directions, connect the hardware (includes a power cord & network cable), power-up PC, boot into Windows XP and access the router through Internet Explorer. Netgear's interface is wonderful. Modifying security settings, an optional step, was a breeze. There is no need to use the CD that was included. But I found two software bugs that were disturbing. One is the SSID still gets broadcasted even though you de-select the option to enable the SSID to be broadcasted. Due to which, anyone can see your router on their Site Survey. Second point is even though I selected WEP encryption & passphrase on the router's security menu... I still could connect to the router thru the pc card WITHOUT giving these options on my pc cards "Security" software menu. Spoke to Netgear's tech staff about it.. they said the firmware fixs are comming in the next 2-3 weeks. Hope this info helps. Cheers.! S.
Rating: Summary: Eeeeaaaazzzyyyy. Review: I just got my Netgear router WGR614v3 last night. Within 30 minutes I had both of my Dell Inpsiron 5100 laptops up and surfing the net. Both laptops have the Dell Truemobile 1300 nic cards internally installed and they recognized the router right away! I did have to configure both computers for the router but once that was done just unplugged everything and replugged it and I was on the net. I do use a Comcast cable ISP and the router detected all the settings on it's own. So far, so good.
Rating: Summary: OK product, but not outstanding Review: i bought this to replace the old belkin 802.11b router v1, not sure about other belkin routers, but my particular one had a crash problem & performace issue only with heavy p2p traffics otherwise fine product with good support netgear 802.11g v2 did not have a reliability issue with heavy p2p, but with fair amount of traffic its web interface did not respond at all; it was with firmware version 2.04(have not tested with beta 2.05) another problem was its performace; heavy p2p connections could not be maintained. the latest revisioned hardware is version 4, could not find v4 from the local store. wireless signal strength was just bit better than belkin & was not any better than linksys befwf411s v4 nor wrt54g v1.1 with latest firmware(jan 20, 2004) my other routers are linksys wrt54g v1.1 & befw11s4 v4; they can keep up with the heavy p2p connections, but its web interface responds well (belkin did well, too), but it seems there are some routing performance problem. by the way, some of netgeat wgr614 v2's web interface menu greets you with cannot find when you update the setting. i had to reset to factory default setting to update the firmware from 2.00 to 2.04 it's hard to find an excellent router; it seem very product has some issues & for me, reliability problem was most annoying.
Rating: Summary: Didn't Broadcast Review: The set-up was easy and the hard-wired part of the router worked, but it didn't broadcast any wireless signal. I spent a cumulative 5 hours with tech support to no avail. They recommended that I return my router and get a new one. I had v2, they said try a v1. There were no replacement netgear routers available at Circuit City, so I exchanged it for a linksys which was functioning fine about 5 minutes after I had it out of the box. Looking at the reviews, it seems hit or miss what router will work, and I've heard of people having issues with both companies. But from personal experience at least, the linksys is great!
Rating: Summary: Very easy setup, flawless to use Review: We use one of these with a number of wired and wireless computers. The setup was brain dead simple, and we had it up and running with two Mac Powerbooks, an HP LaserJet with ethernet, and a number of Linux servers, all with no trouble. One of the Powerbooks has an older Airport 802.11b card, the other has an Airport Extreme 802.11g card. Both work flawlessly. The range on it seems just fine. We have a 2500 sq ft two story and have no problems reaching the router from anywhere in the house. The web based administration for the router is easy to use. We haven't had a single problem with it yet. I've been very pleased with other Netgear products I've purchased in the past, but have routinely had problems with Linksys.
Rating: Summary: Easy so far Review: I first bought a D-Link 614+ router. After trying to get it work for 2 days with my laptop card adapter and giving up after being told that the router was faulty, I installed Netgear's product and it worked just fine. But I haven't used it long enough to experience the signal dropping problem that a lot of people have complained about. A lot of people in their reviews have complained about technical support. I have in the recent past dealt with support at DLink (based in the US) and Netgear (based in India). I found DLink's support quite bad. I had trouble understanding two of their representatives. The one time I called Netgear's support I got good service. The complaints about Netgear's technical support being in India is in some ways unfair. Sure some of their representatives may be hard to understand. But I have come across many support staff in the US who are even more unintelligible and less knowledgeable. I suppose this is the price of globalization. If American corporations want easy access to consumers all over the world, the flip side is American consumers have to learn to deal not only with Texan English and Ebonics, but also variants of the language from India, China, Philippines, etc.
Rating: Summary: Easy to setup, but doesn't like to keep working. Review: I had this router for about a month and returned it. Its easy to setup and had all the features I wanted. It didn't want to renew its IP address with my provider. None of the firmware updates helped. I got a D-Link DI-624 to replace it. It seems to be faster (resets quicker, setup pages load faster) and more stable. Not quite as easy to use as the Netgear (a close second), but a vast improvement over my old Linksys.
Rating: Summary: Easy to Set-Up and Use -- Worked Immediately Review: We have three computers running on this router. A Toshiba PC laptop, an iBook G4 laptop and a desktop iMac DV-SE. All three computers worked immediately upon installation of this router. One small concern is that the desktop iMac DV-SE now achieves less speed than before the router installation, but the laptops scream at 2301 kbps. Sorry to hear that some users had difficulties. http://www.jasonmichaels.com
Rating: Summary: Really really regret this purchase Review: I received my WGR614 v2 in the mail three days ago and it has yet to work. I have two computers that I am trying to link, a Mac running OS X and a Windows XP Centrino laptop. Neither computer can connect to the router. It's like the router doesn't even exist...same for Netgear technical support. Maybe this router will eventually work great, but if you may need even the slightest support from Netgear DO NOT buy one of their products. I sat on hold for 45 minutes only to have a technician walk me through the set-up (thank you, I can read on my own), then tell me to reboot and hang up on me. Thinking this was just a fluke, I called back again, got a different technician, and the same exact thing happened even as I protested that I had already rebooted everything. He literally hung up on me as I was saying, "No wait, I've done that three times..." Thanks Netgear, I will never again buy one of your products. Oh yeah...no response from the online tech support either.
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