How the mighty have fallen: 3COM

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

The demise of 3Com is well known, as is its efforts in resurrecting it's once highly respected networking brand. A recent experience in small biz/remote office networking with a 3Com product however, proves there's more than just a name for 3Com to resurrect.

Product: OfficeConnect Wireless 54Mbps 11g Cable DSL Router
Alias: 3CRWER100-75

My recent attempt at getting out of the clutches of Netgear by giving 3Com a shot was a spectacular failure. Simply put, this 3Com product is just about the most unfriendly, unintuitive, bug ridden, ok, I'll say it, POS, I've seen in a while - and I've seen many in my time.

To think that this stuff has been around for years, it's actually quite amazing that a company can be capable of such poor design...but from an "enterprise" caliber name like 3Com? Makes you wonder if their "enterprise" play is more like death throes....

To wit, these days, these things can be done by my 10 year old niece, and shouldn't require a PhD in simple wireless networking configuration:

• To change settings, you're presented with a SAVE button, which somehow doesn't "fully" save your settings. To those familiar with Cisco type configurations, it's a horrendous implementation by 3Com of "running config" vs. "write to memory"...this is just my own way of making sense of what I went through in an attempt to give 3Com some credit...Alas, unlike the Cisco implementation, 3Com's running config doesn't work. All it does is test your patience....
• there is an APPLY button that flashes, quite annoyingly, hinting that SAVE isn't a save. Surprise! It's not a write to memory - it's a reboot, ok it maybe it did write to memory, and then reboot. Know why I don't know? See next item;
• This POS can't recover reliably from a reboot! In fact it loops forever in reboot land...and the horror isn't over, next...
• You'll likely have to APPLY, er, reboot, EACH CHANGE you make....
• So you think you can just do all the changes, instead of an item at a time? Like resetting the password first, then configuring IP, then security, and only after click the APPLY button? Good luck.

If you hated Windows NT (yes I said NT - this 3Com POS is for that era) for it's reboot requirements during patching and config changes, you're gonna have a grand time with this one. And the extra kick in the nuts is when you try to go to 3Com's web site to see if there's a firmware patch for this...nada. And that's after wading through marketing fluff....in the Support section...Sigh, even the web site is an exercise in futility...

So, now that I've wasted time, more than I really should have (yeah I'm a geek), my advice to anyone thinking about 3Com....think again.