Rating: 
Summary: very simple and quick to set up with a PC, and use with Mac
Review: The setup proces for this wireless transmitter was very simple. I used my pc and the web based setup wizard to get it programmed.Then I flipped on the Airport in my iBook, and it saw the Netgear and communicated with it instantly. Impressive. I've not yet figured out if I can use the encryption feature, that may not be possible for my airport card to talk to the encryption in the Netgear. But I did save more than 120 dollars over buying an Airport Base Station.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this!!!
Review: I bought the Netgear over the Linksys to save a few bucks. My router sits between my DSL modem and my PC. I also have a wireless Mac. Everything installed OK, but I wasn't able to get the router working at all until I found (on my own) a new firmware download and rebooting the PC. After a few hours, I was able to get a wireless internet connection for my mac. They earn 1 star for basic functionality. However, I still can't get my Mac to see my PC, and Netgear has about the WORST support I've ever experienced. I have scoured their website, but found nothing that handles the connectivity issues I'm hitting. The phone support nimrods simply read canned scripts to you, not listening to the problem...I was told "we don't handle Mac issues here" even though the box clearly promises connectivity between Macs and PCs. They were more than happy to offer PAID technical support to resolve the issue. So several weeks in, and I still can't see my PC from my wireless Mac, and I feel like my options are exhausted. I won't buy anything else from Netgear; their attitude has soured me on the company.
Rating: 
Summary: WIFI RULES!
Review: Very easy set up on a Mac. Web-based browser makes it user-friendly, but it's not like a stupid set-up wizard, it makes set up easy for beginners as well as including advanced features for the more tech-savy operators.
Rating: 
Summary: Great looker. Limited features. Port Forwarding Trouble.
Review: I bought the unit to replace my Apple Airport Base station because of the extra ethernet connections. The unit is very easy to set up and has good singal strength (stronger than the Airport station) probably due to its external and modifiable antenna. The unit is of decent quality and a very sleek design. It is a little larger than I thought, being very thin at the expense of width and length. Good thing that it comes with a vertical stand, or else it will take quite a bit of desktop space. Set-up was quite easy, and it starts working without much effort for both my PC and Macs on the network. The unit worked well, until I noticed that the port forwarding feature did not seem work reliably. It only provides for TCP connection forwarding, and thre are no forwarding provided for UDP connections. There are quite a few applicartions I use that seem to use UDP ports, and those will never work. Even the TCP port forwarding sometimes failed to enable applications to work through its "firewall". Applications that are widely available that had not worked well: Yahoo messenger with video resetting once in a while, and MSN messenger's/Netmeeting conferencing features all but ceased to function. Even setting the computer to a default DMZ did not solve the problem. The unreliable and sometimes apparent non-existant port forwarding forced me to remove the router in the chain of connection. This has been nothing but headache, and I am typing this sans the router. I hate to bash on a product, and I am trying hard not to. However, I am just an average consumer without professional demands, and the router comes short even for my needs. I do not know what else is missing, but the lack of UDP forwarding feature and the sometimes unreliable TCP forwarding seems like a grave issue, as it effectively eroded my computing experience. I don't think it would cost much more to implement such features, and it would have been a real winner with such a low price and pleasing design. As of now, I'm looking for something that has more network settings. MR814's controls are pretty bare, and while it may have been good at stifling confusion, it also meant trouble with connections for me.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult
Review: i bought this router and a netgear wireless PCMCIA card. could not get the router to work properly with my motorola surfboard cable modem. spent 2 days on phone with netgear tech support (in india, difficult to understand them) gave up. bought linksys. plugged it in and it worked. no configuration. linksys interface is slightly better. still no idea on why the netgear router gave me so much trouble. bottom line:
linksys---up and running as soon as i plugged it in
netgear---2 days and i gave up, tech support no help
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install and very reliable (SBC YAHOO DSL)
Review: I use Yahoo SBC DSL. I use the router plugged into the DSL Modem and my PC to send a wireles signal all over my house. It works great! 1. The install is pretty simple. It's ready to roll once you have your DSL hooked up. Basically, plug in all the cables and get ready to set up the details.
2. The only challenge I had was when the internet page starts up on the netgear support page. There you set up your encryption settings if you want to. I expected a utility on my desktop to run, but that is not the case.
3. Every now and then I have to unplug the router because my DSL gets interrupted but the router always works.
4. I use the MA401 Wireless card for a WIndows 2000 laptop and it works excellent. It started to pull down the internet before I even installed it. That simple. I recommend both products.
5. You must keep the router in a good location. I had it hidden behind my PC and that did not generate a good signal. Just experiment.
6. The router does get somewhat hot, so keep it in a place not in the sunlight, but not underneath something.
Rating:
Summary: get the linksys router
Review: I was very disappointed with this router. I had just installed an old Linksys wireless router for a friend, but decided to get a Netgear router since it was on sale. The old Linksys router had a lot more configuration options than this router. Out of the box, it doesn't offer the ability to switch off broadcasting the SSID. You have to upgrade the firmware to be able to do that. Even then, you can't turn the wireless radio off, like you can with the Linksys. For security-conscious folks, turning off wireless when you're not using it is like locking your door when you leave home. So, compared to the Linksys router, the Netgear is definitely lacking. The range on this router also does not seem as good as I what I had with the older Linksys router.
Rating:
Summary: Wireless worked, port forwarding did not
Review: As a web developer I needed my wireless router to have port forwarding so I could host ftp and web servers from my computer behind the router. Although the router allowed me to network the computers and connect to the Internet, port forwarding (although conceptually easy to set up) did not work. A call to Netgear tech support did not help. Returned it, bought linksys, and port forwarding worked first time.
Rating: 
Summary: Works great but....
Review: if you're an Apple Extreme user you will encounter some problems setting it up. I purchased the mr814v2 and could not get my Apple Powerbook 12" to connect wirelessly. I searched the manuals and the net and couldn't find anything. I even took my laptop to school to verifiy if it was working correctly. Finally I upgraded the router's firmware and it started working. So... the product works great but remember to connect to it via ethernet first and update the firmware available on Netgear's site. Then it will work flawlessly with great range and speed. I gave it 3 stars because of the problems it gave me during installation, but it works great once you finally set it up.
Rating:
Summary: Mine was defective, yours may work
Review: Summary first, then details 1. Beware the rebate. If you remove the UPN number to get the rebate, you won't be able to return the device for Amazon's credit. (That's one way rebates work for manufacturers.) 2. Do be sure to install the latest firmware update. I connected the Netgear to my Cisco 675 DSL router; that didn't work. After the firmware update the Cisco to WAP connection worked. There were other problems though ... 3. I'm not sure if my unit was simply defective, or whether the MR814 won't work with a secondary 10/100 switch. In any case I had to return it due to poor and unreliable connections between my WAP device and my switch based wired LAN. 4. I received an automated acknowledgement after emailing Netgear tech support email, but no further reply. 5. You get what you pay for in the IT world. At such a low proice point quality control and tech support are luxuries. On the other hand, if a device works then it's a real bargain. I replaced this device with a $250!!! 802.11G Apple Airport which works great at more than four times the cost. 6. My local network expert claims Linksys is the best bet in the low end consumer WAP/router market. Linksys has lots of quality issues too, but they are the volume seller. I'd try them instead. In my case though, I didn't want to spend any more time debugging my LAN, so I paid a lot more for an Apple device (strong brand) with better quality control and support. 7. Debugging LAN problems is hard for a non-expert, there are so many interacting parts. Most of us aren't familiar even with Packet Sniffers, much less hardware LAN monitors. When buying LAN components, a bit more quality is worth a bit more money. 8. The Netgear does have excellent 802.11b range, better than the SMC or Airport. The antennas are removable so you can easily extend the WAP range even further. 9. The Netgear software seemed pretty decent, but I'm very familiar with this kind of software. I configured it with one of my Win2K machines, but the browser UI works fine with Safari or IE on a Mac. Details: I'm a reasonably competent amateur network guy, and I can get advice from a work colleague who's world class. For a year and a half I used an SMC 802.11b device with my mixed PC/Mac LAN and WLAN. The SMC worked well, but I think the wirless card was failing after about 15 months of increasingly heavy use. (I put GBs of data through the wireless LAN every few days.) I was annoyed with the short life-span off the SMC WAP, so I decided to try an alternative. Hence the Netgear. The first problem I ran into was that this device really didn't work when connected to the LAN port of my Cisco 675 DSL router (which cannot be replaced). A download would proceed at about 10 KBytes/sec for a half-minute then stop. Updating to the latest firmware fixed this problem. I then got between 75-120 KByte/sec across the DSL line; this is about as good as it gets. I had more intractable problems on the LAN side. I put a Hawking Technology print server on one Netgear port, and a D-Link 10/100 switch on another Netgear LAN port. (Note mixing manufacturers on a LAN is fine in theory but in practice should be avoided.) When I used the Hawking print server I would lose connectivity between my wireless iBook and my wired LAN server Win2K SMB share. I then moved the Hawking connection to a port on my D-Link switch. This worked a bit better, but connectivity between the WAP client and SMB share was unreliable. I'd lose my network connection after large file transfers, and throughput was about 100 KBytes/sec -- no better than the DSL transfers. Across my wired 100Mbit/sec LAN I couldn't see any problems, but that traffic goes only through my switch. Cables were all fine, green lights, worked with other devices, etc. I still don't know if this device really can support any switch on one of its LAN ports, whether it might work with a Netgear switch, or whether the internal switch or switch/WAP connections were defective. After a month of debugging the failing SMC device and two weeks of debugging the Netgear I was fed up. I paid big bugs for the Apple AirPort. The AirPort works well. I get the same 75-125 KBytes/sec across the DSL, and I get 300KBytes/sec when connecting to my internal LAN share. That's about as good as it gets; 802.11b is the equivalent of a 2-3 MBit/sec wired connection. The Mac software, documentation, and tech support is light years ahead of SMC or Netgear. For most uses though, the Linksys would be my next bet. Most vendors are dumping their 802.11b devices, so you can get a good deal. Do plan on doing a firmware update and using timed transfers of a 5MB file to look for performance issues. Do an overnight transfer of 4-5GB of files as well. If hardware problems show up, return the device and try again. Don't mix manufacturers on your LAN if you can help it.
| 
