D-Link DWL-G120 Wireless USB Adapter, 802.11g, 54Mbps Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased 2 D-Link DWL-G120 802.11g adapters from Amazon through Office Depot to use on two Tivo DVR's. I wanted the extra speed of these adapters, which were the only 802.11g adapters recommended by Tivo. I bought them specifically to make use of the Tivo To Go features that allows you to watch a show on one Tivo that was recorded on another one via the network and to transfer recordings from a Tivo to my PC. Neither feature worked with these adapters. If you read the Tivo website carefully, you will see they recommend D-Link DWL-G120 version B2. The Amazon website did not indicate what version was being sold. I was shipped the B1 version and they keep losing the connection whenever I try to transfer recordings from one Tivo to the other or to my PC. A Tivo person on their community forum verified that a different chipset is on the B2 and that the B1 causes hangups and freezes like what I experienced.
By the way, I don't think the 802.11g makes the transfers any faster than 802.11b. Even when the transfers were working before freezing, the speed was about the same or slower than real time. I've read technical reviews on other adapters and they all say the same thing. Of course, Tivo doesn't mention this in all their hype about Tivo to Go.
I emailed Office Depot to see if I could get a refund or exchange them for the proper version. So far, no reply from Office Depot. To be fair, the first adapter was defective, but Office Depot shipped me a replacement within 3 business days after I phoned them, not that it mattered as it turned out. I'll give them a great review as a merchant if they take back the two I still have.
My advice, pay the extra cost and buy adapters direct from Tivo. Then you only have one vendor to deal with if problems develop. If I ever get the B2 version and they work well, I'll post a new review, but for now I'm giving these adapters the lowest rating possible - 1 star.

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D-Link's AirPlus XtremeG DWL-G120 Wireless USB Adapter makes wireless networking easier to use with its USB 2.0 connection. Using the 802.11g standard, the DWL-G120 offers transfer rates of up to 54Mbps.The DWL-G120 also works with 802.11b standard wireless devices and when used with other D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G products delivers throughput speeds capable of handling heavy data payloads including MPEG video streaming. Like all D-Link wireless adapters, the DWL-G120 can be used in ad-hoc mode to connect directly with other 802.11g or 802.11b wirelessly-enabled computers for peer-to-peer file sharing or in infrastructure mode to connect with a wireless access point or router for access to the Internet in your office or home network.

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NETGEAR ME102 - Wireless access point 32 - Ethernet Review

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(More customer reviews)I just received my ME102 today, and it was up and running in 5 minutes (not counting the time required to drive the screws [included] to wall-mount the unit near one of my Ethernet switches).
I didn't find the USB-based configuration to be ideal. To be sure, it worked well. But I don't like installing drivers and software on my PC that will be used only once or occasionally, and the rest of the time just adds more junk to the Windows registry and is yet another thing added to program groups. (I have issues with clutter.)
In any case, as others here have mentioned, documentation is sparse indeed. And frankly, if you don't know your TCP/IP network pretty well, and/or don't know the basics of wireless Ethernet concepts, you might well find yourself in over your head. The default configuration is far from one-size-fits-all, and the average home computer user will have trouble changing it -- especially with the somewhat non-intuitive interface to the config software.
All that said, once this baby is set-up and running, it's great. I get terrific range and excellent performance, even with a basement mounted access point.
My only caution: Beware of your 2.4 GHz cordless phones. This would be true of any 802.11b set-up, but some of these cordless phones will chew-up your data stream and spit it out in chunks on the carpet. Here, I have my choice between using the wireless Ethernet, or using a Panasonic 2.4 GHz phone... Any attempts to use both, and the phone wins. (The Panasonic is going in the trash very soon; a Uniden 2.4 GHz model cooperates fine.)

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Netgear's wireless access point gives mobile users continuous,high-speed 11 Mbps access to corporate network resources, e-mail, and theInternet. It helps you quickly set up a new wireless network office or extendyour existing Ethernet network to remote locations in your building, without thetime or expense of Ethernet cabling. Equipped with a Netgear cable/DSL router,it lets all users on your wireless network share broadband Internet access.Multiple access points may be used to extend the coverage as well as increasethe number of wireless users. The ME102 supports roaming from access point toaccess point within an office and includes 40-bit WEP encryption to ensureprivacy.
Supporting 32 users per access point, the ME102 works with any 10 Mbps Ethernetand any IEEE 802.11b-compliant product. It comes with a five-year limitedwarranty.

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RCA RIR205 Infinite Radio Tabletop Internet Radio with Wi-Fi Enabler (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)The RIR205 looks good and seems to be well made. It can pickup most internet radio stations from around the world. That includes real radio stations if they are broadcasting live on the internet and also amateur stations being broadcast by individuals. Of course you can do the same thing with a PC but it's harder to do and you have to install different audio player programs, codecs and all sorts of things while the radio just works. It will even play BBC stations that I can't play on the PC because it says I'm not in the U.K. It has stereo speakers that provide good fidelity but they are small and not as loud as some other radios having just one big speaker. The radio will play Slacker Radio which isn't a real radio station but has almost any kind of music sort of like like XM or AOL radio. Slacker will usually work when other internet stations won't. They may have less bandwidth requirements or less overhead to play, I'm not sure. The radio has an alarm clock function but since it gets it's time from the internet I found that although the time is usually accurate it's not always reliable because it won't work if the internet out of service like mine frequently is.
Originally I purchased an RIR200 from J&R through Amazon but when I got it couldn't get it to work at all so I only gave it 1 star. I sent it back and it was replaced with an RIR205. Audiovox was good about replacing it and are more helpful than most other companies. The two radios seem to be identical except the 205 comes with it's own wireless router but I never got that. The new RIR205 wouldn't work at first either and even though I already had 3 older routers I had to buy a new WRT54G then the radio worked just fine. A lot of owners report having wifi connectivity problems with the RIR200 and that must be the reason why. The radio uses vtuner.com and rcainfiniteradio.com to get it's list of stations, not Reciva like a lot of other radios use. Vtuner doesn't quite have all the stations that Reciva does but generally works well and new stations can be added. You can go to Vtuner.com and try it out for free if you want to see if it gets your favorite stations or the kinds of music you like. You can also store Favorites that you listen to frequently but they go to the RCA website so the radio depends on being able to access a third party website everytime it does anything unlike some other models that store favorites locally in the radio's memory. This generally works well but can be a problem if the RCA or Vtuner websites are down for maintenance or unreachable. Also, since RCA sees everything you listen to they could possibly spy on you and keep a list of your radio listening habits. That could be a problem for owners who live in areas where the government considers some stations to be subversive.
This radio is made by Audiovox and sold as the Audiovox in Europe and as the Acoustic Research ARIRC200 in Canada. There is a Google Group for the Canadian version called "Acoustic Research ARIRC200 Internet Radio" that has discussions of that version. There are a lot more reviews of the RIR200 on Amazon listed as product B0016OK5O0. If you search for B0016OK5O0 you can find them.


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Listen to thousands of global music and talk stations with the RIR205 Infinite Radio by RCA.You can listen to web-only streams, as well as AM/FM transmissions broadcasted over the internet from all over the world.Radio includes a WiFi enabler that easily connects to your home modem or router with a standard Ethernet cable.The radio then creates a wireless internet link to the RCA internet radio.The WiFi enabler provides a quick and easy wireless setup option right out of the box.If you are using the radio where WiFi is unavailable, you can simply plug an Ethernet cable from your modem or router to begin listening.You can choose from several audio sources including internet radio stations, local AM/FM stations, radios internal memory, USB input, or Slacker personal radio.Slacker personal radio is an internet radio service where you can create personal custom stations.Using Slacker you can tag the songs you love or ban the songs you dont.Slacker will then customize the music you listen to with every input you make so that the music played is narrowed to your preferred tastes and genres.Slacker offers over 100 genre stations, 10,000 artist stations and millions of tracks.The Infinite radio has 6 preset stations per audio source so that you can conveniently and quickly find the stations you enjoy the most with the push of a button.Enjoy on-demand weather through Weatherbug, giving you one-day, three-day forecasts and emergency alerts.The RIR205 has 512MB of built-in memory so that you can record approximately 10-hours of your favorite music from the internet radio or FM radio source.Use the personal online portal to customize your internet radio.Selections are made on the portal webpage and auto-synced to the radio.You can store your favorite presets and genres or add our own stations and URLs.

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Cisco-Linksys PLEBR10 Powerline To Ethernet Bridge Review

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(More customer reviews)As a networking "internals" guy, I was shocked to find that this product is fundamentally broken at the network layer.
What people are complaining about here is that the device suddenly stops working and must be unplugged and plugged back in again.
This is because the device is trying to be too smart, and is losing track of which power-line modules connect to which computers. Unfortunately, in doing so, it prevents the network-level broadcast facilities from working. The broadcast facility I'm talking about most (ARP, the address resolution protocol) would have automatically corrected the problem if the Linksys box wasn't so broken.
In essence, for all you tech guys and gals, is that a learning bridge should never "learn" the broadcast address.
If you have only PCs, and you load the Linksys driver, they do some magic to keep the devices from falling over dead... But if you mix in a non-pc (Linux, UNIX, Macintosh) using a hub off the end of your power-line device, you're guaranteed to be frustrated.
The symptoms are that some of the network works (whatever was working before the bridge tables got corrupted) and others stop working with no explanation. The box "selectively" forwards traffic, and becomes deaf to other traffic.
It's like being at a cocktail party, and having every third person not be able to hear you, and saying "Over here!" (as ARP does) doesn't help either.
Ugh. In my experience, this is somewhat typical of Linksys products... If you have a windows PC, you're fine. If you have anything else, they won't talk to you.
I switched to the Siemens power-line module, and it has been working just fine for me.

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The Linksys Instant PowerLine EtherFast10/100 Bridge offers a complete Internet connection solution for your home powerline network. The PowerLine Bridge makes sharing your broadband access easier than ever. Build a strong and simple-to-use home network by taking advantage of the most pervasive home networking mediumpowerlines.The PowerLine Bridge is ideal for users who already have a router. It can be plugged into an Ethernet port on a router to equip a network with powerline capabilities and take advantage of the routers features. The PowerLine Bridge can also plug directly into a cable or DSL modem to allow Internet access and data transfer rates up to 14Mbps over home powerlines.With the PowerLine Bridge, create a network in no time at all to share an Internet connection (a router may be required), files, and printers, or even play multi-user network games at blazingly fast speeds. Its easy, convenient, and cost-effective.

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GE TL96572 25 Foot Dual Jack Phone Cord Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this dual phone jack to plug into a Vonage phone adaptor/router Vonage VDV21-VD - Router - VoIP gateway - EN, Fast EN because there wasn't room for the bulky single piece splitter that I was using before. I needed to plug in my telephone and plug another line into my computer modem so I could use the computer dialing feature on my CRM software. (You click on a phone number and it dials the number and keeps track of the call)
This works just fine. I plugged the small end into the Vonage adaptor/router, ran it across the room to my desk and then plugged the phone cord into one of the slots and the computer modem into the other. It works just fine.

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10-22-2007 - Brand New Item. Description - GE TL26572 25-Foot Dual Jack Cord (White)

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D-Link DGS-1005D 5-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch, Desktop Review

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(More customer reviews)I had been using the older 10/100 D-Link switch (DSS-5+) for over two years and never had any kind of problem. About three weeks ago, I wrote a review of that switch here and mentioned that I'd like to try the Gigabit version (this one). After thinking about it for a bit, and realizing how inexpensive these things are, I went out and bought it. Exactly as I said for the DSS-5+, this is a great little switch that's definitely worth the money. All the ports are in the back, the casing has a brushed aluminum look, and it's fanless. So, it's definitely possible to leave it sitting on the desk. Since the "switching fabric" supports 10Gb/sec, that means each of the five ports can carry their full 2Gb/sec (1Gb/sec each way) capacity without problem. The darn thing doesn't even get warm. Definitely a good buy (I rate it at 5 stars out of 5).
Darn near every computer sold these days has a Gigabit Ethernet connection built into it. So, assuming you have the proper cabling (Cat 5e or Cat 6), using a Gigabit switch should let you take advantage of the added speed on your local network. However, it won't make any difference across the Internet since only a rare few cable modem even connect at 100Mb/sec and, as far as I know, none connect at 1 GB/sec.

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D-Link (DGS-1005D) SWITCH 5-PORT 10/100/1000MBPS

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Linksys by Cisco WPC54GS Refurb Wrls-g Notebook Adr Spdbstr No Rtns Review

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(More customer reviews)First of all, it is version 1.1 and the latest version is 3.1 so it's obsolete. Second of all, it produced an error message the first time I installed it, and a different message other times that I reinstalled it. Here is an example:
The drive or network connection that the shortcut "wireless G Notebook Adapter Utility.Lnk" refers to is unavailable. Make sure that the disk is properly inserted or the network resource is available, and then try again.
Sometimes the network connection that it created said that the network cable was unplugged. This is supposed to be a wireless connection, duh.
The only instructions for installing it are on the CD and they are different from the instructions on the [...] website. However, I could never make it work. I downloaded new installation instructions and driver from the web site but it never worked. Whenever I tried to install a new driver version, I got the blue screen of death referring to the bcmwl5.sys file (the driver).
Purchased from Amazon.

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IMO LINKSYS WPC54GS REFURB

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