Having no valuable content from the 3-day weekend as far as entertainment, I shall instead blather on about the new router I was forced into purchasing.  (Actually, I had a rather fun weekend, filled with quite a few engaging activities.  I elect to cover the new router, all the same.)

So, as I’m sure everyone recalls from my breathtaking post back in November, I picked up a new wireless N router at Microcenter, which for the price (free) has served me rather admirably.  This weekend, though, it at least appeared to give up the ghost.  It refused to hand out any local addresses, and the wireless connection dropped to the point where I couldn’t stream Netflix movies.  (Which, having no cable TV, essentially leaves me with no form of entertainment.  Deal-breaker.)  I spent quite a bit of time Sunday morning trying to fix the problem, with limited to no success.  I finally decided it had served it’s purpose, and headed up to Microcenter for a new one.  On the sage advice of Mr. Munkirs, I ended up going with the Netgear WNDR3700.  After some research, my requirements were gigabit support and simultaneous dual-band wireless support, both of which this model covered.  (I would later learn that none of my wireless adapters support the 5Ghz range, making that feature a rather significant waste of money;  oops.)  The gigabit support is a huge upgrade though, and something I have been planning on getting anyway, so that’s worth the cost.  (So I tell myself.)  Those requirements aside, so far it has performed just famously.  It does have something of a confusing interface for some of the more advanced features, which several online reviewers complained of.  But, unlike the Tenda I was coming from, at least it has the features;  Just took a little cipherin’ to use them.  The wireless performance is rather remarkable, both speed and range.  I had a repeater set up downstairs to get my PS3 and Wii connected, but the new router actually performs better without it.  It has some other fancy features too, like the ability to connect a network drive and share it out.  I have no earthly use for this functionality, but since I paid for it I will most likely get it working in the near future…