Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Netgear is supposed to have a 5 year warranty (2 on the power supply). I had one of these for about 18 months. Over the last months it's been increasingly flaky, every week or two it just hangs and needs to be unplugged and started again. It doesn't matter how much it's in use (it's done it when we've been on vacation with minimal network traffic). I called Netgear to get it replaced, but they told me that it's not meant to be plugged in all day, so they won't fix it. Unless you actually unplug all your network equipement when you are not actively using it (I didn't think so), then I highly recommend avoiding Netgear products. *Update* I called later again and got to someone from a different call center and they actually sent me a replacement. I actually forgot if I stopped using it because I just didn't trust the thing or if it broke again. Hopefully/maybe several years later (the original review was written in January 2007) the product is better, but from the reviews it's not clear that they are. It's hard to get low-port-number and no-fan switches of good quality, but I have had much better luck with the HP Procurve 1810G-8 switches I have. HP also makes 16-port versions that I believe don't have fans that are more comparable to this Netgear (no management features, vlans, etc) -- for example HP Procurve 1410-16G. I've used those in the data center a few times when needing a cheap unmanaged reliable switch and it's what I'd get at home if I needed a 16-port switch again.