So the infamous Power Outage of August 2003 fried the WAN port on my Linksys 4 port router. I’m sending it back and they should send me a new one as it is still under their one year warranty.

However, it will probably be a couple weeks before I get the new one; so, I went out to Staples and found a Netgear Wireless Router with 4 port switch for $59. Plus, there is a $20 mail-in rebate (if I will just send the thing in…).

I hooked the Netgear router up, went into its web control panel, set the proper settings and crossed my fingers. And, I’m disappointed.

Sure, we have an Internet connection for the computers, but instead of the DSL speed that I should have, I’m reminded of 9600 baud days. And, it isn’t the DSL modem, because when I hook that up directly to my Mac, it blazes away at full speed.

My stomach writhes as I wait for pages to load. All those &^%$^%# js includes. All those big &^%$ pictures of smiley faces on corporate home pages.

Oh, be still my rising blood pressure.

So, I crawled over to the Netgear web site and downloaded a firmware upgrade for the router. I think it might have helped a little.

I might shut everything off for the night and try again tomorrow. (Yeah, right. I’ll be back before bed, I’m sure.)