Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been working with wireless routers since my first Beadlenet, seemingly a lifetime ago. I recently decided to upgrade my WRT54GS with the 610, primarily for the N band, but also because the 54GS kept requiring a reboot about twice a day. The 610 is my fifth Linksys router, and I have been a reliable Linksys customer - all my adapters are Linksys, every router (since the Beadlenet) has been a Linksys, and I honestly never even looked at D-Link or the others. That has now changed. First, LELA (their Easy Link Advisor) caused a lot of problems. After going though it numerous times, it would just stare at me at the end of setup with "Cannot connect to router". OK, on to manual setup - no big deal, I've done this probably a hundred times or more. I was able to finally get connected. With the router in the exact same place as my old one, my range on the 2.4Ghz band was well under half of what I was getting before. The router is in the basement, which with the 54GS allowed me to go anywhere even on the second story. Now, I cannot go to even the first story, nor can I go to the other end of the basement. Note that this is with the 2.4Ghz band, same as before. I've also successfully connected to the 5Ghz band, but that is even more limited; anything beyond the next room and I'm out of luck. I tried moving the router around - first floor, second floor, etc. - with no good results anywhere. The range is just severely limited compared to the older Linksys products. Finally, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to try the USB storage. Keep in mind I work on computers and networking for a living. After 6 HOURS of setup, I could not reliably access the disk. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Upgrading firmware did not solve this problem, nor did calls to Linksys. I returned the router, tried another, with the exact same results. I suspect they have a significant problem with these internal antennas; Linksys is more than aware that their range is limited, but they prefer the sleek, "sexy" look over actual functionality. That's just too bad and will prove their undoing. I am returning this unit and shopping for another brand. I've finally had enough with Linksys.