Pierre’s Lab

Network Magic is a software that makes home and small office networking easy - very easy, sometimes too easy. It makes several PCs, routers, printers and devices such as digital cameras and gaming systems all talk to each other and work smoothly using only Microsoft Windows XP or Vista - it doesn’t support Linux software but that’s not a real problem as my network is mainly Windows based.

I like several feature like seeing when someone join the network - great to see the kids login in their computers. Network monitoring and very easy tools to secure wireless networks - nice to see when ‘someone’ tries to access your wireless.

I don’t use printer sharing as our 2 printers are on the network already, I don’t use file sharing as we have a mass media storage for file sharing which is now managed by Network Magic.

I love the network map, health and security dashboard - great to know when Mom’s computer needs software upgrade! Once in a while I like to measure my network speed and to know that my youngest downloads like crazy.

The general advices are a bit simplistic for me, remember it’s my job but for anyone else, they are worth the time.

Bottom line for $39.99 up to 8 machines, Network Magic is worth it!

The D-Link DIR-655 is installed and running since now 10 months. I upgrade firmware regularly, the box is on 1.10 which includes nice features such as bridge functions. Plenty of the upgrades are to get certification passed.

This wireless router gets the job done - bottom line. It never crashes, don’t loose connections unless you make configuration mistakes.

The only feature I would complain about is that the email log file function doesn’t work. But what the heck, do I need to receive lengthy emails with logs? Don’t think so.

The setup is quite easy unless you don’t have a clue. Bottom line the D-Link DIR-655 is a great router for the money.