Help me pick a new router.

[jk3a]

Mine sucks. It's a 3 year old motorola model, and I have trouble keeping the signal when playing on my laptop. Any advice on ones you have purchased and had success with in the past would be much appreciated. My living room is only like 50ft. from my office where the router is, but there are a few walls inbetween.

[Freakin]

pc mag had an article in their most recent issue reviewing like 4-5 different N wireless routers. try to find it on their site.

[buckslayer80]

Linksys WRT54G. One of the best.

Here's a list of reviews, but I don't know how old it is:

http://www.consumersearch.com/www/co...ers/index.html

[SamIAm]

Do you guys think of routers as brand-sensitive devices? I've used bunches of different brands and models, and they only reason I've had more problems with Linksys is that I've had more products from Linksys. (I do have 3 dead Linksys cabled routers sitting in a drawer. For parts. Or something.)

I wonder if brand really matters that much.

[LuckyTxGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
Linksys WRT54G. One of the best.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bingo. I've bought an absolute ton of these for customers, friends and family. Newegg probably wonders why I order SO many of them.lol

I've had excellent luck with the WRT54G. I've personally used most all of the big name brands such as, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, Linksys etc. I've had good experiences and bad experiences with them all at times. However, for range, reliability, price and ease of use, I've just become of a Linksys WRT54G fan over the years. I don't bash the other brands and if if price is a huge deal, I just tell people to buy whats cheap, but for $49 at Newegg the WRT54G is hard to beat.

The one thing I will say that I've ran into many times with the WRT54G is that they often need a firmware upgrade. They might work great for months or even years and then start doing odd things, but so far a firmware upgrade has solved the problem every time.

[LuckyTxGuy]

I agree with you Sam....if you only (or mainly use) Brand X, that is the brand you'll usually have the most problems with for obvious reasons. While I do like Linksys and push my customers towards them, one reason is because I know how to use them and I'll be the person installing them and working on them in the future. However, I've had cheap Wal-mart Belkin routers that worked great for years. No brand bashing from me.

[jk3a]

thanks