Rating: Summary: Loving it ALREADY Review: Just go my FM114P today and already am enjoying it. Previously had the MR314 by Netgear and while the MR314 worked it just doesn't compare to the FM114P. Needlessly to say the MR314 went immediately back to the store from which it came. What do I like about it - first price the FM114P unit was cheaper and has firewall, printserver and delivers much, much faster internet connection. This was an excellent purchase.
Rating: Summary: Reliable and full featured. Review: Great Product. Easy to configure. Extremely reliable. I have had zero issues during the 1st month of ownership.The only complaint that I have is the exagerated range. I experience significant drop in signal strength about 80 feet away from the router. It may due the fact that there is lot of metal in and around my home, however, I really doubt that anyone could every get any signal past 100yds out of this. Reasonable price, full featured and reliable.
Rating: Summary: Excellent router Review: This is an excellent router that offers many cool features. It supported everything I have been looking for in a router: VPN, Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), port forwarding (Inbound and Outbound), Intrusion Detection, and it will run in "stealth mode"(doesn't respond to outside pings). It also has a wireless access point and a print server. The setup utility works well and allows advanced configurations. I would definitely recommend this router.
Rating: Summary: Compatibility issues? Review: After a miserable few days with a SMC router, I traded it in for this Netgear model. I was impressed with the Netgear device immediately -- it's much more solid than SMC's version. Setup was a breeze. So far, so good. When I took my laptop out of the room where the router was located, though, the range dropped off the table. Within 15 feet, I had no signal. Netgear's tech support was terrible, so I called Dell (maker of my TrueMobile 1150 PCI wireless card). After 2+ hours on the phone, we had tweaked the card some and increased the range to about 50 feet with no obstructions. That's where I stand now -- OK for my relatively small apartment (although the router is now sitting on top of a kitchen cabinet with clear view of the living and dining rooms)-- but not much good otherwise. Buyer beware.
Rating: Summary: All that you need, period! Review: I bought this as part of move to new house and was deciding between the Linksys and this, having been a user of the MR314. For ... more than the Linksys, Netgear got this right! It's small, solidly constructed, and comes loaded with an SPI firewall and Print Server. Unlike the MR314's wimpy antenna, the antenna on the FM114P is detachable! As a bonus, it includes Zero Knowledge's Freedom Anti-Virus / Ad-Blocking software, although this may also be included in D-Link's and other brands too. Installation was surprisingly easy--it auto-detects PPPoE, and DHCP gives you the REAL DNS servers (another improvement over MR314). Since this box has a "real" processor, I'd expect performance to be good--I'd be curious about WEP degradation. Downsides: 4-switched ports, although it's not much of an issue if you go wireless; lack of rebate offer. Bottom Line: tiny, solid, loaded, great value. Look for my MR314 on eBay soon...
Rating: Summary: good piece of gear!!! Review: bought it. plugged in my dsl modem plugged in my desktop. It worked instantly. configuration has a lot of options most of which I left alone. configuring my laptop was tougher. the wireless pcmcia card I bought (cisco pcm352) refused to to install. and it required some help from cisco TAC and some ugly registry butchery to get going. But... here I sit 60 feet from the router through two thick walls writing this review. so alls well that ends well
Rating: Summary: Not a bad product, but... Review: Netgear has some issues with this product's reliability. The first one, I had for about 6 months. One night it just died. All the lights were on, and it wouldn't talk to any of the ports. Calling Netgear's support line was an adventure within itself. The call center is located in India. Don't call this place if you're on a noisy phone or don't have lots of time to waste. The first person I reached could barely speak english. He was obviously reading from a script, because when I explained that the router did not work, I had followed the troubleshooting guides and this was the result, etc, etc, he still started reading questions and asking me to connect it to a network and do silly tests. That's hard to do at work on your lunch break. He hung up very abruptly with the classic "Thank you for calling bye bye now. " Call #2. Another person, who could speak marginally better english. I went through his troubleshooting script, connecting my "router" to an "air" network. He decided that it was indeed not working (duh!) and gave me an RMA number. Ok. What, exactly, is a doofulfife? Well, it's 55 (double five.) He did explain to me that the dash (in the RMA number) is the little line on the keyboard, you may find it beside your number 0. O-kay!Got the RMA (I think.) Returned it and received a refurb unit and stuck it aside. In the meantime, router #2 was in use. It died one day, about 3 months after purchase. Started forgetting IP addresses and not communicating with the printer. It got returned to the store it was purchased from, and Router #3 went into service. So far, it's worked for about 9 months. Router #4 is waiting, and will be the last one. This is really a good piece of technology, it has just about everything you'd need to set up and protect a home or small office network. It runs extremely hot, which may be the reason it dies so quickly. Now, if only it was more reliable.
Rating: Summary: broke down the 3rd time. I give up (although under warranty Review: I have mine broke down 3 times. Twice before Netgear replaced it for "free", since it still under warranty. But each time they charge $10-12 for shipping. At this rate I could have bought a new one instead of putting up with the inconvenience. I think this box is very sensitive to power on/off cycles. It broke first time during the east coast power outage.
Rating: Summary: Netgear Equals Superb Service Review: This holiday season I was a good santa and purchased numerous wireless networking products for my various family members. Sure it was partially a selfish act as I wanted to be able to easily connect when I went to visit, but for the most part it was just an act of giving. I purchased mainly G products and they varied from routers to USB adapters to PC Card adapters. I did also purchase a couple of B products for those in the family that already had some wireless networking products (yes, I know they are backwards compatible but I didn't want to take any chances).
Only two members of the family had installation problems (considering my family is very non-technical I was quite impressed) and those two people both had yet to upgrade to Windows XP SP2. The rest of the family members were up and running within minutes.
As for the couple of family members that did have problems, well they called me first (of course) and I told them to just run back through the installation procedure again. This solved the problem for Uncle Dennis but Grandma Joyce still couldn't get it to work properly. I reluctantly told her to call Netgear's technical support (hey the reviews on Amazon haven't been too pretty for their tech support). I however was quite pleased when an hour later I got an email from Grandma Joyce thanking me for the great gift. I called her back and she told me that after fiddling with the settings with the Netgear people she was up and running within 30 minutes.
Overall, I consider this the ultimate test of product quality and support and I would give Netgear two thumbs up.
I hope this review was helpful to you in putting your mind at ease regarding ease of setup and trust of technical support if needed.
Rating: Summary: So far, so good. Review: Just bought from EBAY a re-furbished unit, but came in a complete new package. When I saw the 2002 date code I was worried. But once its set up, its working better than my older Linksys. I bought the FM114P for the wireless printer server. I loaded the Printer server software from CD and load the HP officejet, then up it worked. I am amazed. Also got on Netgear.com and downloaded Version 1.5 firmware, it took a while to come up, its also working.
So I would rated a solid 5 star. Check out the Ebay prices. I got it for $35. Can not beat this price for wirelss, router and printer server.
Bob
|