Belkin ME1004-R Wireless Cable/DSL Router

Comment: First of all, I'm a professional tech and I install routers all the time. I am not a newb at this. That said, what should have been a simple 15-minute install took almost FOUR HOURS. Do you have that kind of time? Right, so everytime I tried to input the correct settings, it just wouldn't take them. Or worse, it would *pretend* it did when it really didn't. After a while I thought maybe Firefox was causing the problem, but no, it did this in IE too. And the having to wait 30 seconds each and every time you changed something was lame. As soon as you hit "save" on a Linksys router it's done. Otherwise the router seemed fine, but without getting settings saved properly I couldn't trust it.

I finally gave up and got a Linksys N router.

Comment: I purchased this product based on the reviews on Amazon. The problem is, it is an old and, apparently, discontinued product. The inserts that came with the item were from 2006. The customer support number was no longer in service.I found a new customer support number online.I did manage to get it set up with an assist from Belkin's very polite and well-informed help line.

But I discovered that I have to manually reconnect to my network each time I restart or wake the computer from sleep!!! Belkin, whose support is very good, btw, told me that there was no way to fix this, or maybe I could use start using a laptop, or maybe I could call Macintosh and get an OS upgrade. The guy actually tried to convince me that I should live with this inconvenience and be happy and satisfied! That somehow this was an acceptable state of affairs. I informed him otherwise, politely.

Phooey. I bought it used, cheap, and I guess I will just have to take the hit. I have sent an email to the vendor expressing my unhappiness. But, long story short, I am going to trash this item and go out and buy a new, up to date product.

BEWARE, OUT OF DATE PRODUCT, DO NOT BUY.

Comment: This router, is by far one of the best tech investments I've made.
Bought it at the end of 2008 for $30 from amazon, and I've been so amazingly happy with it that I decided to let the world know, this Wireless router is really wonderful.

There are two things in my opinion that I believe it's missing:
1. The ability to add MAC addresses to a preconfigured IP in the DHCP settings.
2. The ability to specify the gateway and DNS/WINS servers in the DHCP settings.

Before, I was really a fan of linksys, but their devices require a reboot ever so often to get it working again.
Not this puppy, it has been really reliable, a pity though that most changes require a reboot of the device, the only consolation is the fact that it will be back up and operational in about 30 seconds.

Comment: Although set up seems simple, I could not get it to work and ended up returning it (I have a Macbook Pro OS X 10.5).

Comment: I had never set up a router (or anything really) before.. and found this to be fairly simple. I didn't read the directions as thoroughly as I should have, so it took me more time then it should have. The reason I got a wireless router was because my Mac's Ethernet port is broken.. I was glad that my friend left his computer there because there is some "port" action that goes into this set up. It has been working fantastically for me though.