Joined on 12/24/08
dlink 850l
Pros: Unique design and the wireless speeds. It has alot of capabilities and for the price is amazing. The power cord is pretty long which is kind of nice. The package actually came with a ethernet cable which I thought was really neat because I have yet to see any of my routers have a ethernet cable with them. I like how it doesn't have as many blinking lights in the front or anything which is nice because I would rather see less blinking. The speeds were just about the same as every other router i've ever used infact I kind of noticed about 2mb upload difference with this router. The installation of the router however was flawless I hooked it up to my modem and then to my win 7 64bit and it instantly connected. The wireless was pretty fast setup once I figure out exactly how to turn it on. My win 8 laptop notices the wireless right away same with my phones in the house.
Cons: Port Forwards are limited. Mycloud is a little difficult to understand at first and does not have very much info. The cloud doesn't work with older ios phones.
Overall Review: I was really interested in the mycloud capabilities that this router has and I am still messing with alot of it however I think the mycloud is ok. I'm not super impressed with it but it has the capabilities to be impressive. I know most apps are for iPhone 4.3 ios however for something like this it would be nice if it worked on ios 4.2 or something for iPhone 3g. I have a 3g and 4g and 5g and I can't use it on the 3g unfortunately. I think the mycloud should have a little more information about it though on installation. Other than that I think this so far has been one of the best routers I have gotten. I have a couple netgear routers and an asus router. This router is up with my best asus router. I haven't ever had any problems with dlink routers so this is a good router and a good buy in my book well worth the money.
hmm.
Pros: uhh. It was free...
Cons: windows xp and vista only?
Overall Review: Didn't get to use it... came with a case. looked like it was a piece of junk. wasn't even compatible with my computers windows 7.
Cougar A Series
Pros: Looks nice
Cons: Died after a year and a half. Popped and blew.
Overall Review: You'd think for a little bit more pricey psu it would last longer. I spent $30 on a logisys psu that lasted 5 years.
Western Digital 3tb hd
Pros: I have to say.. I'm very impressed with this drive. the drive for 3tb is just as big as my 1tb hard drive which was cool. Once I got it working correctly it recognized right away and formatted to 2.72tb. I had to format to GPT format to get it to recognize correctly and then it noticed right away. the 64mb cache is nice as well. My 1tb is 64mb cache but it seems like this one is a bit faster for some reason. I transferred a 7gb movie it took about 20 minutes. Also did 1gb and it took about 40 seconds. I wasn't sure about how fast it would be. But it did more than I expected. I also transfered 250gb over to it and that also took about 2 hours and the transfer speeds were lowest around 10mb/sec not to bad. I've had drives transfer 1mb or less /sec
Cons: I had to format to GPT format to get it to recognize correctly with windows 7 64bit. It took me a few minutes but once I got it it was perfect. Obviously not enough to knock off an egg.
Overall Review: Really good drive and really worth the buy. I would purchase this drive anytime. And the space is more than enough being a graphic designer I need the space. I use this drive as a storage drive. Hooked up to a 3.0 sata and 3.0 port in a asus 990fx motherboard.
Netgear Router
Pros: It has a very nice design and shape to it. It isn't huge like some routers can be but it isn't the smallest either.. It's pereft to me haha. I like the idea of 2 antennas. I thought it would be a little worse than my $100 netgear router I currently have however that was not the case. The antenna's were extremely easy to screw in. The Ethernet ports are sturdy casing around them, they don't seem like they will break anytime soon. The lights in the front are really solid as far as ample lighting and indication goes. They work really well. I figured I would run it for a couple weeks to see the differences in speeds based on the days/nights and weather. However I have had no drops in speeds or internet. Its very fast for what it is. The Wireless is pretty nice it reaches throughout my house on to my patio and a little further. The cord actually has a bit of distance to it! I've had alot of routers with short power cord distance.
Cons: The wireless took a bit of setting up whereas my other netgear router setup my wireless automatically. This wasn't a big deal it's just like setting anything up.
Overall Review: I didn't have any trouble running games such as BF3 and L4D2, Crysis 2 and alot of others. I also hooked up my laptop and my 2 desktops and ran games like above all at once and my pings remained pretty low depending on server anywhere from 15 - 60 ping which is good. I use cable internet so my downloads were fairly nice averaging 25/mbps and uploads around 4mbps which is no different than my $100 netgear router. The wireless is easy to setup and has a nice range throughout your property. Overall this is a great product for just about any home use and ethernet and wireless use. If you need more ports you can always hook up a switch and add Ethernet ports. I hooked up a 8 port switch and hooked up 4 computers to the switch and did not lose speeds or drops.
tp link tl-sg108
Pros: Well Newegg shipped this item very nicely as usual. Well packaged. Infact, Very nice packaging which the box itself says offers 247 support right on box packaging which makes me feel better about the product. Not alot of products have that. The Switch Sockets are so tight. Well, Perfect. They are actually made with a nice outer bracket. Usually on most routers and switches the sockets are pretty wiggly and loose or become loose over time.. These are absolutely sturdy. The light indicators above the sockets work really nicely and give a great amount of light off. They are also useful letting you know if the port has something plugged into it and if it's working. The rubber mounts on the bottom are really nice. Usually that little rubber pad comes off fairly easily however these don't seem like they will. Can also be mounted on a wall as it has screw/bolt/placement options on the bottom. It's extremely sturdy, small and compact. I was surprised to see this was a switch. I took a speed test without the switch plugged in just Modem - Router - X I had a ping of 12 ms, download of 24.64 mbps and a upload of 4.36 mbps with cable internet Then I plugged in the Switch so the network as follows: Modem - Router - Switch - X With this I had a ping of 12 ms and a download 24.71 mbps and upload of 4.33 mbps. So there was not much difference I think that 0.07 could of course been any number of factors depending on the day and network usage in area. Same with upload. I did some network transfers from computer to computer via switch. To transfer a HD movie from one computer to another on network a 12gb hd movie transfer was sitting around 11.4mb /sec steady - 11.7mb peak. Then a movie 650mb movie at 11.7mb/sec 12.0mb peak. Then without switch I did a 12gb hd movie which transferred at 12.7mb/sec steady - 13mb/sec peak. Then a 600mb movie transfer went 13.5mb/sec - 14mb/sec peak. So I lost about 1-3mb/sec with the switch on. Which isn't bad considering I've seen them take 10/sec or more. Another good thing.. I did not have to restart Computer 1 however did have to restart the other. It had auto detection and picked up right away. There was no installation as I plugged computer 1 into the switch the internet icon showed internet almost instantly. There is no cd needed. Stays relatively cool which is nice because my router and modem get pretty warm after days and days of use.
Cons: Is this a con? Not really just personal preference.. The power cord could be maybe a ft or 2 longer. It is pretty long and will most likely fit for you however I have outlets on the far wall of a 10ft room and Large desk area to fit around.. it was a stretch to the outlet... Longer Ethernet Cables would work to so that pretty much overrides this issue if you plug it in right by an outlet and use longer cables. However that could also lead to the connection getting a tad slower however probably not noticeable in a smaller area like a 10ft room.
Overall Review: I used this testing with Cable Internet which isn't the best but alot of people have something somewhat similar so testing on this was good. Overall if you need a switch I'd say this is the switch to go with. I can't find one thing to complain about it as it's so well built. My $100 netgear router is made cheaper than this and this is $40.00 if that says anything. BUY IT!!