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Wireless Router Advice Needed

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I will be purchasing a router so that my wife can get her laptop on line..wireless hookup for the laptop, hard wire for my PC. There are a ton of choices out there, and I am clueless about what I should look for when selecting a router.

There will just be the two systems on the router/network..both systems running Win XP Home SP3. My PC is a P4 3.0gig, 2 Gig Ram. Wife laptop is based on a AMD Sempron 2800+ at 1.59 gig, 256meg ram (will be adding a 1 gig stick for sure, possibly going to max it at 2 gig in time) Not really sure what ethernet card my system is running, nor what wireless card the laptop has built in.

Needs to be a secure wireless link, our internet connection is via Time Warner Cable, currently at the base 756k connection but hopefully soon going back to the standard 7Meg connection. Range is not really an issue...the farthest the laptop will be from the router is less than 30 feet. Price....in the 40 to 60 dollar range would be okay....don't need a 200 router, can't afford a 200 dollar router.

Any input and recommendations will be much appreciated.

OBIO
 
My recommendation would be Linksys. I've always had good luck with them right out of the box. WRT54G & WRT54G2 are the models I've been using. Usually can find em for $50 unless they're on sale.

D-Link and Netgear are a couple others that you'll probably find. I've seen problems with the wireless end of the older D-Links so I've shied away from them. Can't tell you a whole lot about the Netgear units.


Psst...even though they're plenty good enough right out of the box for most home users, those two Linksys models I mentioned (plus a bunch of other units too) can be "upgraded" with the DD-WRT firmware packages to really add a lot of options to those cheap little routers. You probably won't need to worry about it, but if you like to tweak or need the extra options this might be of interest. www.dd-wrt.com
 
Thanks for the advice gents. Went out to Walmart last night and got a Llinksys Wrt54GS...brought it home and spent 6 hours trying to get the thing to work....an hour and a half on line and on the phone with tech support....turns out it was a dead router out of the box. Took it back to Walmart and got an exchange. I know that the Linksys routers are good ones..my sister-in-law has been using the same one for four or 5 years and never had even a small hiccup out of it.

OBIO
 
I've had problems with a few of them, but the Cisco I that I'm using right now was a middle of the road price at WalMart and has held up where the I kept frying the cheaper ones.
 
Got the replacement router hooked up, secured, configured...and all is smooth sailing. My wife can get on line with her laptop...well, with some help from me as she did not know how to connect to the wireless network.

OBIO
 
OBIO,

A little OT but you mentioned using Win XP Pro with SP3 on both of your machines and it strikes a chord with me. I too use Win XP Pro, and last evening I ran into a circumstance that you should be aware of if you are even vaguely thinking about installing the new Internet Explorer 8 recently released by MS. I did that blindly a few days ago and encountered several CTDs while visiting a variety of websites afterward. (Many of these stemmed from incompatibilities between IE8's new features and older websites) Fortunately for me, I had not installed SP3 since MS tells you that IE8 cannot be uninstalled from XP if you have SP3 installed. Actually, if you read their instructions carefully, I think you can but you have to uninstall SP3 first. MS provides a tool to uninstall IE8 but you have to search for it on their site. Once you get to the point of using it, the Fix tool works well and IE7 is reinstated. Eventually, these sorts of problems will be resolved but for the time being, be wary of IE8 and do your homework.

Stan V.
 
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