Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, let's get a few things out of the way: I am not a newbie, I am not bitter, and I have absolutely no incentive to bash any company - Netgear included. I am writing this review because I want to prevent anyone else from making the mistake of buying this product. Why? Because it is a defective design - and, more importantly, Netgear has no idea what is wrong with it. What does that mean to you as a consumer? Your device will most likely fail. And Netgear is not likely to make it right. Here's the story: After between 3 and 6 months of your router working perfectly, you will wake up one day and only the green power light will be on. The wireless light will no longer blink actively and the network lights will all be dead. Why you ask? Because your router has just bitten the dust. You'll unplug the router several times to reboot it, but nothing will change. Then, you'll press and hold the reset button on the back for 10 seconds or longer - just like the manual tells you to. But that won't fix it either. After a few more tries, you'll finally suspect that the thing is dead and, if you're like me, you'll go to Netgear's site and find no documentation of the problem in their knowledgebase. Then, you'll go to the trusty forums where they can't hide their problems, and you'll see hundreds - yes, hundreds - of posts by users just like you and I who are having the exact same problem. And those are only the small percentage of troubled users who actually bothered to write about it. They'll share stories of nightmare phone calls with Netgear, and some will tell you about the same problem happening to 2, and sometimes 3 replacement routers. Frustrated before you even begin, you'll probably call Netgear to confirm it all and to see if maybe you're reading outdated posts. Certainly the problem must be fixed by now. So you'll call them and get placed on hold for anywhere between 10-45 minutes while you're treated to a selection of awful music, paused only by a shameless pre-recorded message telling you how much Netgear cares about you. Yeah, right. Finally, one of the interruptions will actually end up being a real-live person. What you'll have reached is a tech support agent (friendly, but fairly useless) who will confirm the problem (but only if you're saavy enough to tell them that you already read about it online) and then they'll offer you three return options - all of which have you, as the victim, paying to ship the unit back to them (provided you are still within the 1 year warranty period). Option 1 is for you to ship it and get a replacement within 5-7 business days. The second option is for them to ship you a replacement for $16 within 5-7 business days, along with a prepaid shipping label. This way, I guess, you don't have to bother with choosing the shipping company. And, unbelievably, the third option is to have them expedite you a new unit within 2 days, for the bargain price of a brand new router. How this option is helpful to us, I have yet to figure out. But, it will be presented to you as an option nonetheless. It seems they are making a tidy little business out of selling us defective units. After all of this, hopefully, you are still calm, cool, and collected enough to ask if they have actually fixed the problem - a logical question to be certain since you don't want to pay to replace a bad router with another bad router. And then, if you get an honest person - as I did - they'll tell you that they actually have no idea what the problem is and that the replacement router will be no different from the one you are returning. So, although I haven't quite made it this far, I'm certain that you'll be doing the whole thing over again in another 3-6 months. So what can we learn from this little story: 1) This router is sick; 2) There is no cure; 3) Netgear doesn't care; 4) Your time is worth more than all of this. Stand up for yourself and, if you would be so kind, for me as well. Don't buy this item. Believe me, you will regret your purchase. Remember, this is not an opinion. It is a factual account of what happened to me and to hundreds of other consumers. Don't let it happen to you too. Thanks for listening...