Wow!, May 2, 2006

By 

Tom “ontrac1″ (Flemington, NJ United States) –

  

BOSCH Scores again! What a great “little” router. For the few extra bucks I purchased the kit that included the additional bases and accessories. It’s small, lightweight, comfortable and easy to use with one hand. But don’t let its small size and 1 HP rating discourage you, I feel it has plenty of power to do most hand held routing tasks. As we know, manufacturers HP ratings are often overstated and simply not possible to obtain. (HP = (Amperage x Voltage x Motor Efficiency) / 746. Hinge mortising, round-overs, edging and of course laminate trimming and seaming are much easier with this small router than its larger cousins. Definitely several steps up from my Porter Cable laminate trimmer, but obviously not as powerful as my BOSCH 1617. Both the coarse and fine adjustments are smooth and accurate. The soft start feature and variable speed control are a real plus. The collet lock button is a little small (but I suppose it has to be) and takes some getting used to operate. All in all, this is the router that I’ll be reaching for most often.

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/bosch-pr20evsnk-colt-installers-kit-5.7-amp-1-hp-fixed-base-variable-speed-router-with-3-assorted-bases-and-edge-guide/#comment-2658 AgedWireHead Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:51:20 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/bosch-pr20evsnk-colt-installers-kit-5.7-amp-1-hp-fixed-base-variable-speed-router-with-3-assorted-bases-and-edge-guide/#comment-2658

Lots of accessories, but several important ones are missing…, April 28, 2010

The PR20EVSNK Colt Installers Kit is a great product, with accessories to quickly perform a number of tasks, especially related to installing cabinets and laminate covered counter tops. It performs edge forming tasks like chamfers, ogees, coves, and round overs much easier than larger routers. For fine furniture it is a great tool for mortising decorative stringing. It actually makes installing stringing fun.

The Bosch Colt 1.0 HP router (PR20EVS) is a fine tool that meets every expectation I have for a small “single-hand” or “palm” router. The Bosch motor speed control works great, as it does on the larger Bosch routers. The Colt is designed for small-profile 1/4-inch shaft bits, which can be installed and removed rapidly. In fact, the best feature of this router is fast setup, even when changing bases. The shaft lock on my unit works very well, but just to make sure Bosch also provided a thin 10 mm (3/8 inch x 1/8 inch thick) open-end wrench. If you have difficulty depressing and holding the shaft lock, just use the wrench. The provided collet wrench is a 17 mm wrench (about 11/16 inch). The motor slides in or out of the standard or tilt base with ease. The offset base takes just a little more effort, and I will discuss this more.

The standard base has a square sub-base, which actually makes a lot of sense when it is used against a guide. The motor clamp or lock works easily with the thumb. The fine adjustment works easily (when unlocked) with clear markings: each revolution is 1.25 mm or 3/64 inches). The depth gauge is clearly etched in the motor case in both 1/6″ and 1 mm divisions, with just a little more than 1-inch (27 mm) of travel. One issue is that the fine adjustment mechanism must be cleaned (and greased) regularly. Dust combines with the grease in the exposed portion of the screw.

Two included attachments make the standard base more useful. Both attach at the same fixture: the straight edge guide and the roller/bushing guide. The straight-edge guide works like any other of these devices on larger routers, but it is smaller and has no fine-adjustment feature. It is pretty easy to adjust, with appropriate wings on the adjustment locking nut, but someone with arthritic fingers might find it troublesome. The roller/bushing guide is equipped with a fine adjustment feature. It is useful for edge-forming bits that do not have a bearing guide. All of the bits I have use have bearing guides, so I have not used this guide. I don’t think it will be very useful for me, but in a pinch a core-box bit could be used for a cove bit, a straight mortising bit for a trimming bit, etc. I suspect that when I find myself in a predicament I’ll be very happy to have this attachment, but it will gather much dust meanwhile.

The included PR005 tilt base is intriguing. Depth adjustments are made similar to the standard base, with the added feature that the sub-base assembly tilts 30 degrees one way and 45 degrees the other. Although the degree gauge is deeply stamped, the gloss black color makes reading it difficult. A little white crayon or correction fluid placed in markings improves things considerably. There are mild detents at each mark, 7 1/2 degrees between marks. A bevel gauge can be used to accurately set a straight bit at an angle, so set the angle first then change bits if you want to use some other profile. The intended use for this base is to be able to edge-trim laminates in odd places like the area at the junction of a back-splash and counter. But it will also permit chamfers or v-grooves with straight bits and unusual variations in edge treatment. However, an external guide must be employed to keep cuts straight.

The included PR004 Offset Base permits trimming in otherwise inaccessible areas. Places where a lot of hand-filing would otherwise be necessary. It is possible to cut within 1/2 inch of a vertical surface when a 3/4-inch bit is employed, and this can be reduced to 3/8 inch by removing the spindle cover. To use this base, a drive gear is installed instead of the motor collet, the motor is inserted into the base, and a screwdriver is used to slip the cogged-belt over the drive gear. This arrangement works well–and easier than I thought, but you can only use this setup for 10 minutes at a time, letting the device cool between uses. The offset base includes its own roller/bushing guide which seems to be of more use in this situation, as it helps stabilize the router and prevent gouging. To stabilize the router when routing a back-splash, mount a wood block to the base to run against the back splash. Just drill mounting holes in the base. Installing bits in the offset base is done by pressing a shaft lock (large red button) at the top of the offset shaft and using a wrench on the collet nut. There is no other method of holding the shaft, but the lock is very positive. To remove the offset spindle cover…

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/netgear-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-router-premium-edition-wndr4300-100nas/#comment-2657 Anonymous Thu, 27 Dec 2012 07:06:53 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/netgear-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-router-premium-edition-wndr4300-100nas/#comment-2657   ]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/netgear-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-router-premium-edition-wndr4300-100nas/#comment-2656 C. Hargrave "C Hargrave" Thu, 27 Dec 2012 07:01:12 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/27/netgear-wireless-dual-band-gigabit-router-premium-edition-wndr4300-100nas/#comment-2656

The manufacturer commented on this review(What’s this?)

Posted on

Oct 1, 2012 11:12:16 AM PDT

NETGEAR Team says:

Hi M. Klamm,

We thank you for your honest and detailed review of the WNDR4300! It’s important to us that it works as best as it can for our customers, and we appreciate any feedback.

We’re concerned about the range and signal strength you mention. Could you provide our engineers with more details on how you measured the range and signal strength vs. the WNDR3800 in your setup? You can email us at amazon@netgear.com–any details would be helpful for them to determine what’s happening, and to help you get the best signal quality.

Regards,

NETGEAR Team

 

Qualcomm Atheros-based Router from Netgear, September 28, 2012

By 

M. Klamm “mediatrek” (Liverpool, NY) –

  

This router is based on Qualcomm Atheros chips inside, which in my book makes it a router to put on the top of your “look at list.” The router replaces the Netgear WNDR3800 N600 Premium Edition router from Netgear’s 2011-2012 line up. This Netgear WNDR4300 N750 Premium Edition is for the 2012-2013 line up and offers most of what the WNDR3800 did, minus the Clear Channel Selector feature in terms of features.

The router’s network processor and the 2.4GHz radio are powered by the single 560MHz Atheros AR9344 chip which offers good mid-range performance. In the initial released firmware (v1.0.1.30) however, there are some issues in 2.4GHz throughput inconsistency, even in low interference environments. This should (hopefully) be addressed in future firmware releases by Netgear.

Range/signal strength at equal distances is a little weaker than last year’s WNDR3800 in 2.4GHz, but is still on par with other routers for medium-sized homes. You will want this router to be vertical in its stand for best range performance. If you have a large home, I would upgrade to the WNDR4700 from Netgear or go with this router and pick up a dual-band range extender or two.

Like with just about all Netgear routers, do not keep the 2.4GHz channel selection on AUTO as the router never picks the best setting to use. You will want to set the channel to primarily be channel 1, 6 or 11. Nothing else!… any other channel setting just overlap with others causing signal, throughput and other performance issues.

The 5GHz radio in this router is brought to us by the Atheros AR9580 chip, which with a 3×3 dual-band wireless adapter gives a link rate of up to 450Mbps. Range as with just about all 5GHz signals is weaker compared to the 2.4GHz radio signal. However, signal strength is on-par with last year’s WNDR3800, but does offer better throughput speeds than the WNDR3800 did whether using a 2×2 dual-band adapter as I do in my laptop (Intel Advanced-N 6205), or a full-on 3×3 dual-band adapter.

I was looking forward to this router, but to be honest with the initial firmware, I am let down. Would I say this is a bad router? No. Would I say right now that for a mid-range router for what is on the market to having this in my top 5 consideration list? Yes. As of 9/28/12 you can still get a WNDR3800. That I would go for, just do not install the v1.0.0.40 firmware on the WNDR3800 as it has bugs relating to 2.4GHz connections. You will want to upgrade to v1.0.0.38 for now on the WNDR3800, which works great.

My score for now on the WNDR4300: 3.5/5.

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2653 Bill Catambay "Don Merlin" Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:22:20 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2653

A very nice switch, January 21, 2002

By 

Bill Catambay “Don Merlin” (Santa Clara, CA USA) –

  

I have been replacing my ethernet hubs with switches (because the throughput on a switch is much better than on a hub). After extensive review, I decided to get one D-Link 5-port switch and one Netgear 5-port switch, both auto-sensing for 10/100 rate. The truth is, they both work great! They both perform well, and were equally easy to hookup (no software to deal with). I will add one thing, and that is that the D-Link box was a much nicer design than the Netgear. First of all, it is much smaller (the picture of the D-Link here is deceiving). Secondly, the Netgear has the LED lights and the ethernet ports on the same side. For my setup, I prefer the ports on the back and the lights on the front. I think the Netgear switch was fashioned more for a rack. Style aside, a big thumbs up for both of these switches!

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2652 Heath L. Buckmaster "_heath_" Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:16:51 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2652

Fast router, flexible, design is a bit uncomfortable for me., July 31, 2000

By 

Heath L. Buckmaster “_heath_” (Sacramento, CA USA) –

  

  

  

I originally had a hub, and when I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere near the throughput I would get with a switch, the obvious choice was netgear. the switch is fast, slick looking, and has LED’s to tell you everything about your connections. the downside? design. the ethernet cables plug into the front of the unit, while the power cord plugs into the back. the problem here is that if your ethernet cables are as flexible as warm butter, they get in the way of the led’s or each other. when i plugged three cables in, the box sat to the side because the weight of the cable held up up. if you are going to wall mount the unit (it comes with screws to do so) then that might help, but if you are going to set it on your desk, the ethernet cables have to run from the front of it, instead of behind… the unit also gets warm, so make sure you have clearance on all sides so it gets air. otherwise, despite the design issues, the product is slick. has led for 10/100mb, full duplex, collisions, and the 5th port doubles as an uplink…. for fast networking netgear makes a quality product.

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2651 Joseph Chiu Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:51:14 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/netgear-fs105-prosafe-5-port-fast-ethernet-desktop-switch/#comment-2651

A good, solid switch. A little nicer than others., January 24, 2001

By 

Joseph Chiu (Los Angeles) –

  

With switch prices coming down to about $10-per-port, it’s hard to justify buying anything less than a 10/100-switch for all but the most cost-conscious buyer.

As most 5-port 10/100 switches have the same capabilities and cost about the same, there’s not much to distinguish one from another. Still, I particularly like the Netgear FS-105 5-port switch. Like other products from Netgear, this switch is a little nicer than the competition because it has:

- Nice sturdy metal construction instead of plastic. The case also has a grounding tab in case you’re using the switch in a (electrically) high-noise environment.

- Connection status indicators built into the jacks, so you can easily tell which cable is connected and is active. (The “vistajack” feature.)

- Right-angled barrel power connector which reduce the likelihood of disconnecting power accidentally.

- An easy-to-access switch to toggle port 1 between station mode and uplink mode. Unlike some hubs where two jacks are wired together, this design prevents accidentally shorting a station to an uplink.

- Screw-mount notches on the underside allows for easy attachment to the wall, underside of a counter, etc.

With a 1000-MAC address buffer and 200 Kbytes-per-port packet buffer, this switch can easily handle the typical traffic load of small- and medium-sized networks.

The Netgear product is not the cheapest 10/100-switch (check out the D-Link Fast Ethernet Switch, for example), but for overall design and value-for-money, I still like the Netgear the most.

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]]> http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/tauntons-complete-illustrated-guide-to-routers-complete-illustrated-guides/#comment-2649 James L. Fuqua "Jim" Wed, 26 Dec 2012 04:59:26 +0000 http://technetz.com/index.php/2012/12/26/tauntons-complete-illustrated-guide-to-routers-complete-illustrated-guides/#comment-2649

Excellent book, April 5, 2008

By 

James L. Fuqua “Jim” (Hendersonville, TN United States) –

  

This book has the best illustrations I have ever seen in a book of this type. I probably own about fifteen books on routers and jigs that use routers. Most have similar content. This book has most everything the others have with better illustrations.

What sets this book apart is the quality of illustrations and that it has some information that none of the others cover. The issue covered here and in none of my other books is how to use the router as a prelude to hand woodworking.

For dovetails, no router jig can match the versatility a skilled woodworker can obtain by hand with a Japanese saw and a good set of chisels, but even a person making hand dovetails can save time and do some prep work with a router for some, but not all, dovetails.

I took a class on woodworking essentials, including hand dovetailing, at Lonnie’s woodworking school in Dandridge, TN. Many of the time saving techniques he taught in his class are in this book. In his class a router was not used to make dovetails, but but was used to remove excess wood where convenient so that time was not wasted in getting down to the hand work. I might add that I had a week to read and look at the book at his school before buying it. I added it to my collection of router books because of the quality of the book. I have no other relationship to the author or publisher of this book.

I strongly recommend this book and also Lonnie’s school. He makes museum quality work by hand but knows how to use machines where they make sense. Although I was not one of the best students in his one week class of seven students, the dovetails I made were better than some I have seen as illustrations in books on how to hand cut dovetails. That he could teach me is a testament to both his patience and skill as a teacher. He is an equally good author.

Machines can take over and make pieces for you. Every book on routers seems to teach that approach to woodworking. This one goes beyond and teaches things useful to those of us who want to learn fine hand woodworking also.

When I buy a book on woodworking I want to learn skills that will last and not information that will be outdated in a short time. It bothered another reviewer that this book did not cover routers from other countries. The features offered by manufacturers of woodworking machines change so frequently that no book could be up to date for long about such matters. Reviews of the relative merits of one router over another can best be obtained from magazines. Even then by the publication date the information will likely have changed.

In summary this book is complete and well illustrated. If you will own but one book on routers this one is as good as they get.

Jim Fuqua

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