Final Follow Up--LINKSYS Etherfast 1-Port Cable/DSL Router

In response to our Tuesday report and follows up we received a surprising number of emails suggesting that we should not be promoting the LINKSYS Etherfast router which has deplorable Mac support according to a number of emails. Instead, we should be promoting a product from Macsense which supports Macs. We have several Macsense products and, indeed, Macsense does support the Mac. Of course, we are not promoting the LINKSYS router. We are just reporting on it and its use in detail as any user might experience, warts or not, and we purchase many of the things that we review. Readers will make up their own minds about the product.

A reader named "DJ" stated that the Java method for updating the firmware worked fine with his computer and router set to using DHCP so there is no DHCP issue as we speculated when the method failed us. We swear by Kem Tekinay's shareware MacTFTP Client for this purpose and have no idea why the LINKSYS router's built-in Java updater failed.

Finally, we still stand by our comments that the LINKSYS router is an excellent, quiet and, at $85, an inexpensive replacement for a Mac running a software router. MacTFTP performed a firmware update flawlessly. We will again try the router's built-in Java updater at the next firmware update.