Linksys Wireless-G Range Expander: After Some Set Up Help, It's All Good

I recently bought a new iMac for myself and gave the old iMac to the kids. I got them a computer desk and moved the iMac into the room, except there was one major problem. There was no wireless signal in their room. Oddly enough, I could take my laptop into their room as long as it already had a signal, and it would hold. But when starting the computer freshly, the signal was nowhere to be found. I tried a few solutions including USB signal enhancers, but they weren't compatible with iMacs. I even tried Apple's own solution, but it wasn't wireless and with my set up, it was beneficial that the solution be wireless. After very little help from the Best Buy dudes, our own Andy Hilal offered some help and told me to try out this product. At $100 it was pretty pricey, but at this point, I was willing to pay the price for their room to have a signal.

Out of the box, there isn't much to the Linksys Wireless-G Range Expander. There's the unit, a second battery that is connected to a plug with a long cord, and a cat5 cable, in case you want to go wired. Where my Linksys wireless router is situated compared to where the room is located, it made much more sense to try to go wireless. What makes the device very proficient is that it plugs into the wall and you don't have to do any bracketing or framing. As long as you have an outlet nearby within signal, you can find a nice place to put the device that's out of the way of major traffic areas in your house.

There are two ways to power up your expander. The battery is located on the back, right next to where you plug in the expander. If you need to place the expander where it's not ideal to sit the unit on top of the outlet, the second battery comes in handy. You simply pull out the first battery, put in the second, and you can plug it into the wall, via a long cord. In order to set up the range expander, you have to try to get it to talk to the router. You press the auto configuration button and it starts to try and receive the signal from the router. Once it stops blinking and becomes blue, it has found the signal.

Now here's where it got tricky for me. Everything seemed to work fine, but I still wasn't picking up a signal in the kids' room. No matter where I put the expander, it wasn't working. I decided to call Linksys and though I was very much expecting to be frustrated while talking to them, Linksys customer service came through with flying colors. It took roughly 30 minutes to fix the issue.

The customer service representative walked me through configuring my router online which was pretty painless, and I plugged the device back into the wall, went to the kids' room and hooked up to the internet, and life was good. Though there was some pain in understanding what the problem was, when it was finally fixed, the product worked exactly like it said it would.

I'm very happy with how the device works. The device sits in the hall way and talks to the router, and sends the signal at a right turn to the iMac in the room. It was once a logjam for the wireless signal and now it reaches in fine fashion. I haven't found any slowdown with the signal in the room and it works as described with my G router. The antenna sits completely upright and stays plugged into the wall without issues. When you can buy a product that does exactly what it says, with very little trouble, that's a product that I can recommend.