Re: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Don't buy from NETGEAR
How else do we know about problem hardware and vendors with Linux - if it is fixable we get to know about it, if not we find out why and gain from that. Is this gentoo relevant? Yes and no - such publicity is what makes manufacturers sit up and take notice and gentoo as well as linux in general will benefit - but not if we accept it and hide our heads in the sand. As well as poor hardware, netgear support sucks. In OZ we are supported out of asia by people who dont understand english or our culture (Oz has a culture?) - it took many days/emails until it was escalated to the point where I got to email a westerner who understood what I was trying to say. In my case it was a firewall/router that would go to sleep: reccomendation was to upgrade to beta, unsupported drivers. It doesnt work, sorry ... In the end I left a linux box up 24 hrs sending keep-alives, so the windows boxes would still have net access in the morning. Ive stopped reccomending anything netgear as I can bear hardware that takes some time to get going, but not in combination with non-existent support AFTER you have paid your money. BillK On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 20:32 -0700, Matthew Marlowe wrote: Allthough I am not sure this is the best place for a personal rant against some company, I am sorry to hear of your bad luck. Maybe not, but here is another one that is a prime example of why not to trust netgear: -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Don't buy from NETGEAR
On Apr 6, 2005 5:32 AM, Matthew Marlowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Netgear used to make decent network cards, but that stopped 3-4 years ago.To my knowledge, linksys and dlink never had a great reputation to beginwith. Usually our Netgear stuff works. What actually broke was DLink switches. We were happily working along with our DLink switches until we installed MS SQL 2000 Server. It totally broke them. Apparently (?) SQL Server generates so much traffic that the DLink switches couldn't cope with it (the only change we did was install SQL 2000 Server). We had to switch to 3Com (and if these break it's Cisco I suppose). My horror story is with LG I don't touch anything they make anymore (my previous employer had countless problems with a PBX, and thinking that was a fluke I bought 5 LG 17 screens - all broke within a year).Regards,Martin S
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Don't buy from NETGEAR
quoth the Grant: I've been screwed over by Netgear for being a Linux user and I need to spread the word. I've been having a seriously difficult time getting my Gentoo machines reliably connected to my wireless network for almost 6 months. The software end of things is finally rock solid and I now realize that one of my 3 wireless cards works only sometimes. Luckily, I have two of that card. One copy works every time in two different machines and the other works sometimes in them. Very long story short, they will not replace my bad card because I can't try it in Windows. I even explained to them that I bought 3 Netgear wireless cards and one Netgear router through Dell 6 months ago. Even after a lot of yelling and bad noise they would not budge. The rep said he agreed with me but that that it is out of his hands. He also would not put me on the phone with his supervisor. - Grant Allthough I am not sure this is the best place for a personal rant against some company, I am sorry to hear of your bad luck. Apropos, my Netgear WG511 is working great for me. I have heard that they changed the chipset of this card from Prism2 to Broadcom (I think) without _any_ mention. This has bit a lot of people. Urban legend says if the box says Made in Taiwan, then it's Prism2, if it says Made in China then don't buy it. -d -- darren kirby :: Part of the problem since 1976 :: http://badcomputer.org ...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected... - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972 pgpsnRiqXI3Vo.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Don't buy from NETGEAR
On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 15:43 -0700, darren kirby wrote: quoth the Grant: I've been screwed over by Netgear for being a Linux user and I need to spread the word. I've been having a seriously difficult time getting my Gentoo machines reliably connected to my wireless network for almost 6 months. The software end of things is finally rock solid and I now realize that one of my 3 wireless cards works only sometimes. Luckily, I have two of that card. One copy works every time in two different machines and the other works sometimes in them. Very long story short, they will not replace my bad card because I can't try it in Windows. I even explained to them that I bought 3 Netgear wireless cards and one Netgear router through Dell 6 months ago. Even after a lot of yelling and bad noise they would not budge. The rep said he agreed with me but that that it is out of his hands. He also would not put me on the phone with his supervisor. - Grant Allthough I am not sure this is the best place for a personal rant against some company, I am sorry to hear of your bad luck. Maybe not, but here is another one that is a prime example of why not to trust netgear: http://dev.gentoo.org/~spider/netgear.txt In short, their Gigabit cards don't support network traffic... //Spider -- begin .signature Tortured users / Laughing in pain See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information. end signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Don't buy from NETGEAR
Allthough I am not sure this is the best place for a personal rant against some company, I am sorry to hear of your bad luck. Maybe not, but here is another one that is a prime example of why not to trust netgear: I'm not sure that it's reasonable to signle out netgear here. All the cheap network vendors have their issues. Linksys used to have faulty spanning tree algorithms in their L2 100Mbps switches, and their initial wireless access points had such a broken UI that they were almost unusable. Signal range also sucked. Netgear has typically been quite reliable for unmanaged L2 switches. These days, I'm pretty much resigned to having to buy Cisco for routers and wireless, HP for switches, and intel for network cards. They all work together quite well and are reliable. Netgear used to make decent network cards, but that stopped 3-4 years ago. To my knowledge, linksys and dlink never had a great reputation to begin with. Regards, MattM -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
