A Steal worth considering!

Straight_Man

Linksys BEFW11S4 $64

Ebuyer Linksys Rebate page



I'm going to tell you Why, then I will tell What and Where. You will see why.

Cisco bought Linksys. Cisco apparently decided to get Linksys busy producing 802.11a series and to phase out the slower 802.11b products. Linksys had a lot of combo Fast Ethernet+Access Points+DSL\Cable modem Gateways. Before the start of the chngeover to a, these little puppies cost about $280.00 each. I will tell you how to get up to two each for about $65.00 max if you act fast.

Let me tell you current pricing on these and I will tell you the rebate terms afterwards. Right now, there is a company in Chandler, Arizona called http://www.ebuyer.com/ For you overseas in
england and areas around they also have a branch in the UK. This is the model number of the above combo gate\switch\AP I spelled out more clearly above: BEFW11S4. ebuyer.com either is dropshipping through Linksys or has on hand only about 5500 of them in the Arizona branch. They have an absolutley flabbergastingly low price on these. SIT DOWN! right now they are $64.00 BEFORE a Linksys back to school rebate per household of 10.00 each limit two SKU perhousehold for rebate. For a home network these are quite decent at $100.00 each. (prices are all US, you Englanders and Irishmen get to check your area but 20% of intro retail for NEW of these is a blowout). To get the rebate, you have to buy by Sept. 13 and send completely there by Oct 24. Again, overseas folks see what rebates are available.

It gets better. Same company has about 3500 WMP11s. Those are at about $55-56.00 right now (price floats on volume). Same rebate, same terms asd before, limit two as before. In continental US, ground shipping is free for both things. Combo price on one each kind of device was as of less than an hour ago about $119.00 US, still same other terms. I did not get the combo price on the wireless plus the combo BEFW11S4 but the WPC11 PCMCIA card alone is about $48.00 right now and the reabte applies to that too (same terms, downloadable in Acrobat Reader form right off ebuyer.com's website). How about that for a Back to School or Away to College SPECIAL????

They are quoting up to two weeks from time of order to guarantee delivery for free shipping naywhere in US, I think they have a bulk shipping arrangement as I KNOW they ship a lot. Support will be primarily Linksys unless you live in area code 480 in Arizona in which case it is not long distance for you. These folks are bulk-buying brokers for some things and they are listed on PriceGrabber which is how I found them. Check things out for yourselves, I am not because of rebate wait times gonna wholesale these myself.

Omega may echo this elsewhere if he wants, I do not need credit and right now do not need wireless gear. I have a local friend I want him in on this and and if he wants three I will buy one for him. So our Icrontric friends mostly will hear about this first would be my preference.

This is part bacuse the a'sare close to being released, part cuz these folks know a passon deal for quick turnover when they see one and fair pricing. The more popular AP only devices they have fewer of and they are selling those at about $80.00 US tonight. If nothing else, note this:

the rebate applies to:

802.11b gear;
BEFW11S4
WPC11
WUSB11
WMP11

802.11g gear;
WRT54G
WPC54G
WMP54G

Wired Gear:
BEFSR41
LNE100TX
PCM200

All same terms, limit two of EACH per rebate form, and savings is likely to vary by product due to quantity on hand changes resultign in pricing changes. There are ONLY a few catches to this deal-- working returns are subject to a 20% restock and you ship back adn if you live outside places Local to Chandler you pay for phone call to tech support.

Rebates want a purchase receipt, ebuyer.com qualifies, and they need the box UPC codes cut off box and mailed in. Edns Sept 19, ebuyer price adjust several times a day based on sales and trends up when stock gets low fast. At guess stock on hand might last until mid Sept the way it goes.

I have bought from them and they ship exactly as stated on webiste(couple times). This one takes the pricing case and is due in part to the wireless gen move. You probably\might not want these for big business.

For home or basic use they are great and cap at over the throughput of Comcast right now for things local to the AP(I had a friend with a damaged one testing last night, he was getting 11 MB flow wireless flow close but the signal strength dropped a lot on his mom's computer which had worked until a neighborhood thunderstorm)which is rated speed full strength for 802.11b Linksys gear).

John.

Thrax

Funny. I talked to a Cisco engineer late last spring, and he told me that they wouldn't be using 802.11A in their products, rather trying to tune 802.11G because it had a longer range at the same bandwidth.

danball1976

Seeing how Cisco bought Linksys, what does that mean towards the quality of Linksys products?

Thrax

...Seeing as Cisco is the #1 provider of enterprise networking equipment in the world, and the corporation that powers 80% of the internet's major hardware.

I would venture to guess: Better?

Straight_Man

For Cisco named products yes, for Linksys named products check with Linksys as they are going to be the more economical line for Cisco Linksys. Talk to your engineer friend again and ask if Linksys is going to be the more economy division of Cisco for small business and home use, OK???

The problem with g is that to tune the g around the solid wal signla loss in many buildings they would have to put out a non-standard g. My guess is they discovered that between then and now because the complaint of those who have metal wall studs, lots of electrical runs, or block walls arehorrified about teh amount of boosters they need for g and a penetrates walls fine and was designed in part to work around that.

Cisco wants small business business, Linksys gives them an in, Cisco is strong on engineering, and Linksys has a decent (not superb) name and needs an influx of very good engineers in it. I do not think the b prices woudl be starting to drop with the g prices showing a slight downward trend now if they were not going to do a gen switch for small business. For big business it may be as you say, they are willing to brand identify with Cisco products if Cisco can prove a small freq change will fix penetration and not overpenetrate, for security reasons, and take the better bandwidth. But their major competitiors also announced a gear and they also said the wall penetration and fewer needed boosters was why as well as reasonable speed, especially for smaller businesses with less to spend on wireless. I would expect both a and tuned Cisco stuff to be more expensive than b or g, but for smaller or medium businesses I am saying hold out for a if you need a lot of workstations on it and have walls to get through in interior of facility.

One reason, afaik from gear specs so far the b and g will not be compatible with a, so unless a hacker REALLY wants in he\she is not going to cruise the neighborhood with both b and a gear. g is more secure, but one big room is best, or thin non-load bearing walls for cube space. For security most folks do not like a common thing that anyone can sniff, and they use walls to protect sensitve data and firewalls are often needed to meet code and those must be metal studs plus rockboard(cement composite) inners under drywall or block construction or poured reinforced concrete for some things. Dense walls. Small business does not have those as often interior to work areas-- they are better candidates for g right now and a later if business burgeons. Big business does.

Second, any real high speed wireless needs a big backbone to get bandwidth into the hard network and fiber costs. g is more secure but needs more gear in larger quantiites to not degrade 25-30% through a block wall. g has an absorbing frequency relationship with cement stuff, and the rockboard I am talking about has cement like contact as to absorption. a is less likely to go way over budget with many repeaters in odd places to go around firewalls.

I know construction folks and folks using g in the field, and soem projects have been dropped because of wall penetration problems. It would definitely have to be a non-standard freq to work around this, and many medium business managers and small business managers will just say no to very big and time consuming bandwidth mapping to get around the penetration things and accurately map costs for penetration and bandwidth analysis.

You have an engineer grade mind, me more mgt experienced IT generalist with electronic education also adn practical experience and broad contact base in field (I do not play name games, I talk practicality and get feedback that way). What you say makes sense for a monopoly, or mostly big business with big IT and engineering budget but many managers like intercompatibility across brands for costing compares and competition adn resist single brand supply solutions if others exist that are more intercompatible across brands.

Kicker-- Linksys has been taking other engineering research approach and studying a moree than tuning. Marketing plus knowledge share with merger, tiered products also. I was talking students and homeowners for deal, small businesses also as those might need one laptop connected to one PC for not constant use. Mediums have a in place, many of them. Clearer??

Different perspectives, but all determine market.

Thrax

I go wardriving with G/A gear. Uncommon my arse.

Straight_Man

Idon't wardrive, don't have your budget for pure wardriving gear and am 50 almost with about (um, started when I was 17 with closet sized 4 bit boxes) 33 years using and building and imnplementing and adminning things. Who among us adminned a Zenix 6 station state then of art Tandy business system whil building a fluid control company a catalog??? That happened in the late 80's. I have heard lots of workaround ideas and this one does not fly well for inexpensive use.

Different gen also and about 6 years business manager also--I was consulting in the late 80's and forward. I never bothered to advertise a lot, never needed to-- word of mouth. I have two general contractor brothers, one who is a masonry restoration specialist also-- youngest brother is 30 something and a restauranteur and wine connesuir. Me, I'm into stable boxes that perform and stable reliable networking in all sorts of environments mostly indoors.

Enverex

Seriously considering buying the Linksys Wireless-G 54mbps Broadband Router......

Will buy a PCMCIA card later at some point for my laptop, and already have WiFi in my PDA....

NS

Straight_Man

That will work in-house at high rates, but the internet access will determine how fast things get to ISP and back. Will make your local LAN more effective but not get much m ore out of internet unless you have a T1 or greater (think OC64 rates, satellite connect, if you want comparable ISP bandwidth).

Best of luck with your g. In my case, I only have one other box that might go online so my mom can surf from her mini-office and she and I just use my online box. I found this as a friend had a weak all-in-one as described in my post and needed an inexpensive LAN way to share broadband.

Straight_Man

To the point of "better?" Hopefully Cisco will implement some of their quality control methods in Linksys product production and share engineering knowledge between what I suspect will be 2 divisions. It is possible the Linksys name will be kept, but their QC is not good enough for enterprise so I strongly suspect they will be mostly a consume\small business division. Cisco has been leaning that way in terms of new market research for a couple years. (DSL mini-router, for example, widely spread medium or Enterprise companies with many small offices like Century 21 can use small business things in each office and Century 21 operates as many small businesses under a common umbrella insofar as traffic per office is concerned.). If made of good quality and economical, small businesses will buy small-lan-to-web interconnect gear.

Linksys's problem is QC basicly, engineering knows what they are doing. Cisco has more skilled high speed netowrking engineers than Linksys at this point, and much better QC.