Joined on 10/22/06
Great router with some great features!
Pros: Like most modern routers, setup is simple and straightforward. I plugged it in and it began working immediately. No retina blasting blue lights of doom! This has been a pet peeve of mine for years with most consumer electronics, and home routers were always a serious offender. I'm glad to see that D-Link has seen the light, no pun intended, and gone back to the traditional green/amber status lights that were typical over 10 years ago. As a geek, I'd have preferred activity lights as well, but it does lend to a cleaner design. Overall, it performed better than my previous router, but not by much. Both are units without external antennas, so the range suffers toward the edges of the house. However, the DIR-826L seemed to be more stable at the extreme ranges, although the connection was weak it did stay connected while my old router would sometimes drop out. The USB "cloud" features are a nice touch as well, although I did not make heavy use of them outside of testing due to having an actual server for the task. Still, I did test them out, and have used them on other D-Link products, and am happy to report that the system works well enough for light home use and keeping your media accessible on the go.
Cons: An extremely minor issue, the base of my review unit was ever so slightly warped, so it would not sit perfectly flat on any surface. This wouldn't normally matter, except that the unit is extremely light and this exacerbates the physical stability issues. As it is, even with an unwarped base the lightness of it means it probably won't stay put if you utilize every jack on the back. No USB 3.0, but I would consider that a minor con. In my personal opinion, if you need networked storage vast enough to require 3.0 speeds, a proper home server would be a better choice than the jack-of-all-trades method of a home router.
Overall Review: Very strange tube shape. I have a stack of my old routers in the corner of the basement, and every single one is a flat rectangle, sometimes with a vertical stand. Certainly a unique shape that stands out from the crowd. Contrary to an earlier review, WPS is easily disabled (and should be). Perhaps the reviewer did not know that WPS stands for "Wi-Fi Protected Setup" and that menu is found near the mid-bottom of the list of options under the "advanced" tab. Simply uncheck to disable. After a couple weeks of testing in a large home setting, I moved it to my girlfriend's apartment for further testing. While it may have been comparable to my previous router at home, it blew her cheap router away. Higher speeds both wired and wireless, and more importantly it didn't need the almost daily resets of her old one. I was going to keep it at my place, but after such a drastic improvement she wouldn't let me take it back. :)
Major bummer.
Pros: Wasn't that expensive compared to comparable flash drives at the time of purchase.
Cons: Like most of the other reviewers, mine eventually stopped working. It wasn't being used much, which is probably the only reason it lasted the 16 months that it did. Like another reviewer, I was using this with a Raspberry Pi, and everything was fine until today when I discovered it was "write protected". Tried multiple tools across three different operating systems, and nothing worked. Thankfully there wasn't anything important or sensitive on the drive, so it can just go in the trash, but I still would have liked to have gotten a few more years out of this.
Overall Review: It's slightly amusing to look back and see my own review as the most recent one. Guess they didn't sell too many of these. No idea what caused the failure either, but I will say that the drive itself always seemed very warm to the touch compared to most other flash drives I've used.
Works great
Pros: Cord may be a little short for some users, but the length is perfect for my needs and cuts down on cable tangle. Comes with a piece of double sided tape that I didn't even know I needed. This keeps it stuck to the side of my case instead of flopping around the desk. Hasn't randomly dropped connection like most hubs.
Cons: A minor gripe, but I wish the cable wasn't on the opposite side from the ports, as this would make my setup a bit neater. But there's nothing really wrong with it.
Overall Review: I've had a lot of hubs over the years, and I've come to expect that anything plugged into them may disappear at any time and have to be plugged in again. I'm happy to say that this is not the case with this hub, I've had 4 USB HDDs plugged into it for weeks now, and none of them have dropped out.
Perfect for my specific needs.
Pros: Low profile bracket included, internal USB port, and 4 pin power.
Cons: These ports are not going to be bootable, but that's to be expected.
Overall Review: I bought this card to add USB 3.0 drives to an old HP N40L. I needed a small card with a low profile bracket, and the 4 pin power was a plus because that's what the server uses anyway, so no adapter needed. The internal port was another plus, the N40L has an internal USB port, and this was a way to have that same internal USB capability, but at 3.0 speeds.
Perfect for my needs.
Pros: I needed a Y cable to make several tight bends around sharp metal edges in a compact server case. I specifically chose this one because it was the right length and already had a rubber sleeve over the individual wires. I realize that the intended function of the clear tubing was for ornamental purposes, but it works just as well as an abrasion cover.
Cons: None that I can think of.
Overall Review: Looks like I'm the first person to review this item in almost a decade! I'd almost forgotten about the "UV" fad, these days it's RGB everything. Makes me wonder if the cable I bought was manufactured recently, or if it was new old stock that had been sitting around for years. Regardless, if anyone else ever shops this cable and reads this review, I highly recommend it.
Great value!
Pros: Low cost, apparently high quality.
Cons: It's lightweight, so it tends to be pulled around by the cables. But this goes for almost all hubs, as adding weight would increase cost.
Overall Review: Bought this thing about a year ago to connect a bunch of USB drives to an older machine that only had 4 USB ports. I expected there to be problems, but it has worked flawlessly.