Just thought I'd post a little message here. Recently I bought the SB5101 modem from some very good feedback on them. When I went into the store and there were three on the shelves, two had refurb stickers, the third was unopened. I won't say what store, but if Scooby Doo was saying the name it would sound like "rest ruy". Anyway, I bought the unopened one, got home, plugged it in, and it would boot up nicely and appear to be working. If you hooked a computer into it, first off it would take a while to acquire a signal. After that if you tried to go to a webpage the modem would promptly reboot. Once it was back up, the webpage would load. Try to go to another, it would reboot again. I troubleshooted everything with the modem and nothing seemed to work, took it back to the store, got one of the refurbs, and same thing. Thought it might have been my set up so I took it to a friends and it did the same thing there, even though his setup worked perfectly and we made sure it had the same settings. So, I took it back and bought the Linksys CM101, which has worked perfectly since setting it up. I don't know what the problem was exactly, but it seems others have had problems hence the refurbs. I suppose I'd stay away from buying any of them for a while, I guess they had a bad batch or something.
We should really have a Modem listing the Hardware section that way you could leave an honest review. It's sort of tragic any time something like this happens because its time and money (because Bes.... "Rest Ruy" won't refund your gas). I hope, if nothing else, you went back to the sites where you found the misleading feedback and posted this, lol.
I did post my feedback on those sites. I don't like to shoot down an entire line because god knows the SurfBoard line has been around long enough and I have seen them working fine. But for one store to have 3 non-working items like this is pathetic. Me personally I don't feel really that bad because I could just drive up the road and take it back, whereas people that buy online would have to go through much more. Maybe it was just a bad batch, but was a frustrating experience to say the least. And really, I know it would be hard to test every single modem coming down the line, but with one store getting atleast 3 bad ones, who knows how many more went out. And it would be simple to test, plug it in, send info through it and it resets. Very annoying. BUT, as I said before, I don't want to shoot down an entire product line because of one bad experience, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth. I personally have never cared for Motorola products, every one I have owned has seemed to be buggy and lack of features. I am even annoyed at the new HD receiver I received that is Motorola...its a pain in the ass to use.
It has to be better than my magnovox hd reciever. None of my universals will code into it, and I've finally lost that pathetic little remote that came with it, so now.. I'm stuck with 1 channel, and no ability at all (aside from unplugging it) to turn my reciever off. I can't believe we'd quit putting front panel buttons on something under the notion that most Americans would rather do without completely (if they lost their remote) than walk over and press a button. I'll take my buttons any day of the week, thank you. But that's perhaps off topic... The motorola surfboard line has quite a following and is preffered, at least, by many of the internet providors here in my area (NW Florida). So it does alarm me, even if slightly, to think that a good percentage of those modems might be defective right out of the box.
They are the preferred modem around here too. My ISP uses that exact model so instead of paying "rent" on it I went and bought it, figured I atleast knew it was compatible to their network. BUT, then I found out that there are atleast 3 duds right out of the box. Yeah, I like my buttons too. I do know people who if they can't find their remote they will leave it on the same channel or just not cut the TV on all day until they find it. I laugh at my dad when he spends 30 minutes looking for the remote to change the channel because he doesn't like a show. By time he finds it the show is off and one he likes is on.
