Wireless Belkin Breeze

Now sometime late last year to the start of this year our Level One ADSL2+ Modem Router sort of gave up on us. Couldn't figure out why we couldn't connect online with it. All the light lit up and all, but we couldn't connect to the web-based manager. Thankfully we still have the old modem supplied by Streamyx, so we switched to that.

Trust us not to realise the simplest solution available, not until we brought it to Computer War for a diagnosis: "kena thunder".

Anyways, there wasn't any urgency for us to get our wireless modem router fixed, since we've not been playing our Wii for quite a while (sadly), neither do we go online with our DS, and we've a mobile data plan for 500MB now.

We were hoping that it was somehow salvageable but we expected it to be otherwise. Better yet was when the guy at Computer War told us that our model only had a 1-year warranty, and that since last year Level One started a lifetime warranty policy on their newer products. Had to start looking at a new wireless modem router, then.

And when we started looking around, we were a bit confused. Prior to our visit to Computer War we had a look at a few other stores, and generally wondered at the difference in prices. The way the products were named didn't help. And yes, while we're fairly capable in techy things we've never been able to follow every bit of techy stuff there is. Like, we're able to fix up our wireless modem router, but get slightly lost when they ask us if we're using PPPoE or PPPoA and what is our encapsulation etc...

And shopping for a new wireless modem router wasn't any easier at first. You see why we're calling it in full? Because all this time we just thought 'router', thinking that all routers would have the functionality of a modem, a router, and wireless networking. The first router we saw was priced about RM60ish, and that led us to think that prices for routers have gone down. Then we saw another router that went for twice that price.

So we started paying a little more attention to what the words said on the box, and got lost reading about G Wireless, N Wireless, N+ Wireless etc. After asking around it was clear that the cheaper ones were just routers without a modem, our previous wireless modem router was a G standard and that N standard meant stronger wireless signal strength. And most brands don't call it a wireless modem router, they term it ADSL/ADSL2+ Wireless Router.

Now we know.

Back to when we had ours diagnosed at Computer War.

Technician says ours is fried, we think, okay, it's time for a new one. The only two brands that offer lifetime warranty are Level One and Belkin. We ask the technician if he has a Level One current model that is similar to what we have. He checks and tell us that there's no more stock at the moment, and offers us the next best thing, a model with the N Wireless standard at around RM250ish. How about the Belkin? There's a G Wireless standard at RM200ish.

The Belkin looked aesthetically much more pleasing compared to the Level One. And based on our experience with the G Wireless standard, we didn't think we needed something faster. Plus, we're not connecting wirelessly to our pc, that's still via network cable so the wireless standards don't apply. And it actually says G Wireless Modem Router on the box! Nearly plain English!

You can pretty much tell which we chose, heh.

And to cap it off, even installation was much easier! The installation CD definitely had the laymen in mind as everything was asked in plain English. And now we're wireless once again!