Roses are red, Violets are blue, NETGEAR, Inc., I hate you.

[JSUCamel]

In my house, we have wireless internet. My computer is on one side of the house, and the computer with the router connected to the cable modem is on the other side of the house. And when I say the other side of the house, I mean as far as you can possibly get from my computer, yet still be on the property. There's no feasible way to move my computer any closer without moving it out of the room, and there's no way to move that computer any closer without moving it out of the room.

As a result, I'm on the very edge of the wi-fi range, so my internet connection drops randomly and such.

Last weekend, I found the solution to my problem. I got a Netgear Wi-fi Extender. The box says "Plug'n'Play".

Not so.

I plugged it in and nothing happened. Turns out, you need ANOTHER part to make the extender work. Ordered that, got it, plugged it in.

No dice.

I googled some troubleshooting tips, looked for instructions and such, and couldn't find anything that would work. Finally, I gave in and called Tech Support.

I got some dude in India.

Didn't understand a damn word he said.

Finally, after an hour and a half of "what?" "Press dee STAHT bottun. STAHT. ESS TEE AY ARR TEE" and other such instances, I finally just said "Thanks, but no thanks" and hung up.

I gave it a few days to ponder and stew over the dilemma before I took it back. After all, this set-up cost me $100.

This morning, I googled some new search terms and I found the solution. Apparently, each device has a passcode on the back of the device, and you pick one to be the main device and tell the rest which device is the main one, so they know which one to "dial home" to.

It'd be nice if the instruction manual had this information, eh? Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Ultimately, I got the thing to work, and my connection is forty-eight times more stable than before. Good deal.

But that's not even the interesting part. The interesting part is that I just received an email to take a survey with respect to the tech support and rate them and such.

Fairly typical, until the second question. Here. I'll just show you:

http://www.brianseitel.com/survey.jpg

Nice to see I got a full range of choices for the second question, eh?

[Birgitte]

lmao... Nice, Camel. Someone was thinking when they made that survey.

[Mort]

Hehe, where is the option that says "I'm going to complain and steer people away from Netgear on at least one internet community"? :D

[Sodas]

Wait. What model extender?

I have both an XE102 and XGE102's if you need help.

[Gilshalos Sedai]

Nice. Nothing like skewing the results.

[JSUCamel]

the XE102. I got it working though. Thanks anyway.

[Crispin's Crispian]

the XE102. I got it working though. Thanks anyway.
Netgear's idea of "plug and play" is a joke, as are the "instructions" that come with their products.

I bought a wired router a few years ago because I had two or three computers to set up. The instructions consisted of single page of mostly pictures, and only helped with the very first steps.

Anyway, I searched online for more, and found a PDF copy of...the exact same shitty instructions.

It never occurred to me to call tech support, but it sound like it wouldn't have made any difference. Needless to say, I steer away from Netgear whenever possible.

[Sodas]

Well, the powerline adapter's they make rock (which is what the XE102 really is). They have much better bandwidth and are much better for gaming than the Linksys and Panasonic ones, even if they are rated at a lower speeds. However, the setup and instructions are bad. They need to better explain how powerline works (why you need 2+ adapters) right on the box as well. My friend didn't know and only bought 1 XE102 the first time as well, and was p/o'ed to note that he would need to buy another and/or an XGE102.

[JSUCamel]

Evidently, each XE102 has a passcode on the back, and you have to tell each of the XE102's which one is the one connected to the router. That's not mentioned ANYWHERE in the instructions that I have.