The only drawbacks--which are all minor--are 1) it doesn't seem to get as good of a signal as my other devices, but since it has a replaceable antenna and comes with very long cords I can fix that; 2) its form factor and LED displays don't match other typical Netgear products' style (like their routers and access points) so it looks kind of odd; and 3) whenever you click Apply in the Web configuration screens, it requires the bridge to reboot, which takes a minute or two, and if you switch from a static IP to DHCP, you'll probably lose your connection entirely and have to figure out what the bridge's new IP is to get back to the configuration page.

None of the complaints I have are a big deal, and I'm very happy with this product. I just wish it was a little cheaper, since it's basically just a wireless "card" for PCs that can't use a real wireless card.

I bought this wireless bridge for the sole reason of hooking up my PlayStation 2 to my home network for online games without running 50 feet of Cat5 cable down the hallway. And, for this purpose, the ME101 is perfect. Simply: this thing just works.

I configured the bridge with another computer, but found that it actually works best with the default settings. I plugged one end of the cable into my PS2's network adaptor, and the other into the ME101, and a few minutes later I'm online! One of the great things about this device is that it just "disappears" on the network when another device is plugged in (when checking my attached devices on my router, only the PS2 and my other PCs show up, not the ME101). Throughput is great, no lags, and my wireless router is two rooms and 30 feet away.

Granted, the signal strength is lower than my other wireless devices on the network, but it's speed that's important to me, and this thing delivers.

In conclusion: if you need to hook up a device such as a PS2 or Xbox, and don't want to run yards of ethernet cable thru your house, this little number does the trick. It's simple to set up, and does what it's supposed to do. I recommend it for this purpose.

After upgrading the firmware and seeing 12 hours of fine performance, I started getting HUGE packet losses. I'm running 3 PCs and 2 Mac OS X boxes thru it. Rebooting cleaned up the problem for about 5 minutes. It is UNUSABLE in this state.

I called their customer service -- which they've outsourced to India -- a corporate trend I cannot support.

It's going back to the store >:-p

-You need to know what you are doing to set it up correctly since the instructions aren't a lot of help. If you are not familiar with networking terms, seek a friend that does, get another product that has a friendlier manual or prepare yourself with a lot of patience and trial-and-error.

-It won't "connect" to my wireless network if my access point does not broadcast the SSID. It finds it, but it never locks on it even if you enter the SSID in the bridge configuration.

First of all, you need the firmware upgrade. Don't try anything without upgrading first. I connected the cross-over cable included to my computer, installed the utility program included in the cd and upgraded the firmware (you also have to upgrade the utility program).

Once that was done, I had 100% signal strenght across the room (lets say 8 feet.) It was about 70% before the firmware upgrade. The 64-bit encription takes it back to about 84% however. I then took it to my basement (1 floor down, about 20 feet away through 3 walls) to its final location where my Playstation is. It worked without any problems. I've had it on for days now and it doesn't lock up or loses signal strength. I used to run a network cable all the way down there and I can't tell that I am using a wireless bridge instead of an ethernet cable. It is just as fast and reliable.

I also was curious about how the bridge was going to work with access control by MAC id (I have my wireless access point set up this way). It worked great. It locks on the network but it will throw itself out if the device you have connected to it is not in the MAC access control list.

Overall I am very satisfied with it, but I can see how it would get frustrating if I didn't know about networking.

I bought this to connect a small lab in my basement to the rest of the house network ... house has no cabling and I got tired of dragging a 100 foot cable down the hall from the office. Out of the box it had firmware version 1.0 on it ... it would lock up after about 20 minutes and need to be power cycled ... Netgear's web site has a 2.0 firmware load available ... Once I did the upgrade it has been rock solid and does the trick for me.