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[Discuss] Linux box for under $20? TRENDnet



On an impulse, I bought a wifi router at Microcenter a few days ago, thinking
that heck for $25 I wouldn't mind have an upgrade from "g" to "n".  Now I see
you can get this for $19.99.  It plugged right in and did what I want out of
the box.  Why bother posting such a pedestrian purchase to this list?  Here
were the surprises:

* My P3 Kill-A-Watt reports 1 watt (vs. WRT-54G, 5 watts)
* The vendor supplies full GPL source code on its website
* It's on the OpenWRT hardware compatibility list

I don't yet see a reason to swap out the vendor's software for OpenWRT but I
found it interesting that prices for a "Linux box" have dropped below $20. 
Admittedly, it's only a 400MHz CPU with only 32Mb of RAM, but it does have 5
100Mbit Ethernet ports and firmware that, off the shelf, does more than my old
faithful Linksys.

Amazon reviews for the product are lukewarm but I suspect most of them are for
early hardware revs.  Anyone else here have comments about the TRENDnet
routers?

-rich





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