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I've Reconsidered the Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router
Early in 2007, Linksys took their WRT54G well-respected wireless router and updated it once again. Many times, Linksys will make new firmware available for their existing products. But, they also release new versions, too.
Linksys does this fairly often with their products and gives them new version numbers. Most of the time, these new versions are tweaks to the previous model and have new firmware as well as some new capabilities that aren't in the earlier models.
This time, with version 5 of the WRT54G, Linksys changed the operating system of the router, and retired the WRT54G that used Linux as its operating system. In effect, they created a new product and gave it the name of the respected product. Unfortunately, in doing so, there were a few bugs.
After some of my friends had problems with the Linksys WRT54G v5, I stopped recommending it (I had the WRT54G version 2). By that time, consumer pressure had motivated Linksys to release the Linux-based version again (which works with any kind of computer — the Linux aspect is within the router) as the WRT54GL.
Well, enough time has passed now that I decided to check out the new WRT54G. The first thing I found, from the Linksys web site, is that there are now version 6 and version 8 of the WRT54G. Unfortunately, I bought mine at CompUSA who had version 6. Linksys does not print the version number on the outside of the box, so I only knew which version I had by opening the box :(
Anyway, in my own use, I have found it to be stable and to be faster than the earlier version 2 model that I used until recently.
As such, I'm changing my recommendation back from the WRT54GL to the much cheaper WRT54G.
You can find the WRT54G at Amazon.com
