4. Closing thoughts

Although an established player in computing products, ASUS is a newcomer to the networking market. It's a crowded space dominated by a few large companies with plenty of me-too products from smaller, usually Taiwan-based, companies jostling for shelf-space and consumer awareness. Even though I admire the technology and appreciate many of the thoughtful design touches that ASUS has put into the WL-300g, I sense they have a lot of work to do to really go up against the "big boys".

My concerns boil down to availability and support. I checked Pricegrabber, Froogle and pursued just about every "Where to Buy" link on ASUS' website, but couldn't locate a single on-line retailer that carried any of ASUS's wireless networking products! ASUS finally gave me only a single U.S. source for the WL-300g - Star Tech - whose website doesn't even show the product! (I confirmed via phone call that they have product in stock which they'll be happy to ship you if you give them a call at 877-827-4283.) Simply put, ASUS has to fix this if they want to make a dent in networking market share. (ASUS agrees and said that they're hard at work expanding their retail distribution.)

Also in need of improvement is support. Though the support website has networking product downloads for drivers, firmware and documentation readily available, there's not even a Networking category in the Technical Reference section, and only a single entry in the contact information, since none is provided in the WL-300g's printed Quick Start guide, or any warranty insert in the product box. Even though support is available daily, there's a strong preference for email support, and you need to hit ASUS' website to open a case before calling their phone support, which is available daily, but currently only from 5:30AM to 5PM Pacific Time.

I also definitely got the sense from my email exchanges with ASUS in preparation for this review that knowledge tends to flow from Asia, since I usually didn't get a reply to my questions until the following day. But ASUS told me that they also have a support group in Kentucky, so hopefully response times will improve.

But if the support and sales issues don't bother you, and you want a pretty nice little 802.11g AP for not a lot of money, then you might want to give the WL-300g a try. At $90 it's a pretty good deal, and given a little more shakedown time, should eventually be a pretty good wireless router too!