Netgear presentation lends insight into future products

While Netgear certainly boasted about its current range of peripherals, routers and switches during a recent conference, a few presentation slides enabled us to get a brief look at what's coming next from the firm. 'Course, we're already aware of several Q3 launches -- including the SPH200W Skype WiFi phone and a number of Wireless N routers -- but Q4 and beyond hold some pretty interesting treats. On the docket are such niceties as the WNHDE111 Wireless N HD Bridge, WN111 WiFi USB dongle, EVA7000 Digital Entertainer Plus, and the EVA8100 Digital Entertainer HD. Moreover, it looks like Netgear is also planning a new array of smart switches and ReadyNAS drives, so if you're interested in diving into all sorts of corporate hoopla, the read link awaits your attention.

[Thanks, Jayoung R.]

[Homer J @ Sep 18th 2007 11:12AM]

When is Q3 for Netgear? Do they follow a December close to their fiscal year?

[Mike @ Sep 18th 2007 11:29AM]

Anyone who has used enterprise level Netgear products has the experience to tell themselves to shop elsewhere when looking for home networking equipment.

[Sly Raskal @ Sep 18th 2007 12:53PM]

Their home products are crap compared to their business level products.

I think it was earlier this year I needed to get a new[er] router and instead of buying another business class router, I bought one of their pretty looking white home versions and since then my network hasn't been running very well. I get dropped signals, poorer reception and they STILL have not fixed a small bug that I reported them more than 2 years ago in the access controls for services you add.

The new corporate paradigm: "We care about you, until you buy our product."

[Brian McBride @ Sep 18th 2007 12:11PM]

Mike,

I have a different experience. After blowing through a couple Linksys and DLink routers, I finally settled on Netgear and I love it. I really appreciate the level of firmware they have.

Also, I had some hands on with their ReadyNAS stuff, talk about awesome. Very worth checking out if you have need for network storage and want some pretty nice raid features.

[Sly Raskal @ Sep 19th 2007 10:02AM]

All the credit for the ReadyNAS should go to Infrant, not Netgear. Netgear simply bought them out and slapped their name on it.

I purchased my ReadyNAS NV last year a few months before the NV+ hit the market which wasn't too long before Netgear bought Infrant.

I don't know how well or bad Infrant was in terms of their business dealings, but I wish they hadn't been bought out by Netgear. All it means for the consumer is higher pricing, less support and less innovation IMHO.

I used to love Netgear products, now I'm rethinking that after having issues with my latest router.

[Sly Raskal @ Sep 18th 2007 12:50PM]

I once was a happy netgear customer but not anymore.

After their purchase of Infrant they raised the price of the diskless ReadyNAS NV+ from approx $650 to $950 and it was the same box. Nothing changed.

Boo Netgear!

Luckily I had already purchased one last year and one of my friends purchased one before they hiked up the price. I sincerely hope they lower the price back down to what it was before.

[Brian Erst @ Sep 18th 2007 2:07PM]

I think it sucks, but according to Infrant employees, the diskless box went from $650 with an optional $199 3-year warrantee extension, to $850 with a default 5 year warrantee.

The box didn't change, but the warrantee did.

Given that Infrant itself only lasted 5 years (before being bought out by Netgear), that 5 year warrantee may not look that hot...

[brandon @ Sep 18th 2007 1:47PM]

I just got my first HDTV, and I've been trying to find a box to stream 1080p over wireless N - so far all my searching has turned up products that are not available yet. Anyone know of a solution, or am I doomed to run a wire? All of my media is on my HD and I'll be damned if I ever buy physical discs again.

[rootw0rm @ Sep 18th 2007 2:31PM]

Netgear is some of the lowest quality equipment and service i have ever had the displeasure of dealing with.

[Arborio92103 @ Sep 18th 2007 2:31PM]

I bought a SPH200W about two weeks ago. It sucks.

[Fyrewerx @ Sep 18th 2007 7:14PM]

Having had great experiences with Netgear in the past, I picked up a Netgear 150 "N" adapter for my Linksys "N" network. Besides only connecting at 1 Mbps (hardly capable of HD transmission), it causes so much interference that Windows Media Center, and even Media Player, are unusable.

[M Burke @ Sep 18th 2007 7:18PM]

"From the wool enterprise the knock-down road it receives a firmware from the nation which does not have a frequency limit with the makeshift against this part it updates the expedient which it presents, it did but, makeshift only patching up book one, the actual alternative has an excessiveness on description below."

Is it me, or does the Korean-to-English translation leave something to be desired?

[Nick Smith @ Sep 19th 2007 8:27AM]

I bought an EVA700 when they first came out. Although the product works quite well, there's many issues with it that makes using it frustrating. There's been one firmware update and that fixed nothing. With this kind of product support displayed by the company, I won't be buying any more Netgear products.

[Michael Lerner @ Sep 20th 2007 3:42PM]

Same here but the only reason I really bought it is for streaming videos which it does a good job with, as long as you use the new beta firmware.

[Roberto Balzan @ Oct 3rd 2007 3:01AM]

I'm an IT professional and sold this product to a big client of mine.
I made the install and the device did not function bad at first, but then came an upgrade of the firmware and of the software utility to manage the SC101T from every single client of the network.
TWO of the PCs had the OS (WIN2K) simply destroyed, with BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) after forced restart. No way at all to repair it.
I contacted Netgear Support (at European level) and they spent three weeks (I suppose doing nothing), then called me and said that the problem was mine and to restore a backup older than the original installation made in June!
I also wrote on Netgear forum (where a lot of people have problems also with the SC101 software and with XP pro clients), but my post about terrible support was not published as 'offensive'.
To add bad to bad this product does not support 64 bit OSs and wont never do.
Simply skip it and buy something else and better, if you mind the safety of your precious data.