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: FS-105 is a Poor Product.
Review: This product needs a larger backplane to handle a network. I have encountered delays and lost signals with this switch. I asked tech support why this was happening and they told me that this switch could not handle large file transfers. That's too bad because now I'm going to return this product.
Rating:
Summary: A good, solid switch. A little nicer than others.
Review: With switch prices coming down to about $10-per-port, it's hard to justify buying anything less than a 10/100-switch for all but the most cost-conscious buyer.As most 5-port 10/100 switches have the same capabilities and cost about the same, there's not much to distinguish one from another. Still, I particularly like the Netgear FS-105 5-port switch. Like other products from Netgear, this switch is a little nicer than the competition because it has: - Nice sturdy metal construction instead of plastic. The case also has a grounding tab in case you're using the switch in a (electrically) high-noise environment. - Connection status indicators built into the jacks, so you can easily tell which cable is connected and is active. (The "vistajack" feature.) - Right-angled barrel power connector which reduce the likelihood of disconnecting power accidentally. - An easy-to-access switch to toggle port 1 between station mode and uplink mode. Unlike some hubs where two jacks are wired together, this design prevents accidentally shorting a station to an uplink. - Screw-mount notches on the underside allows for easy attachment to the wall, underside of a counter, etc. With a 1000-MAC address buffer and 200 Kbytes-per-port packet buffer, this switch can easily handle the typical traffic load of small- and medium-sized networks. The Netgear product is not the cheapest 10/100-switch (check out the D-Link Fast Ethernet Switch, for example), but for overall design and value-for-money, I still like the Netgear the most.
Rating:
Summary: Best Buy!
Review: With the growing number of PCs and Laptops in my house I decided it was time to install a network. I need a cheap solution that what easy to install and required NO maintanence. The Netgear 5 port switch was the perfect buy for my solution. It sits quitely in the roof of my house with the server and has not failed me yet! It is incased in a hard steel shell making it very strong and reliable. If you're looking into setting up a home network I recommend you buy this switch as you cant go wrong!
Rating:
Summary: Best Buy!
Review: With the growing number of PCs and Laptops in my house I decided it was time to install a network. I need a cheap solution that what easy to install and required NO maintanence. The Netgear 5 port switch was the perfect buy for my solution. It sits quitely in the roof of my house with the server and has not failed me yet! It is incased in a hard steel shell making it very strong and reliable. If you're looking into setting up a home network I recommend you buy this switch as you cant go wrong!
| 
