The Thomson routers are basically Karoos equivilant of BT Home/Business Hubs, they get hold of them for next to nothing thats why you get no charge when getting Broadband.

I find that the Thomson Routers can provide a it of a bottle neck when trying to connect to the Internet as they are cheap and nasty, but unfortunatly Karoo like BT will probably insist on this been installed on the line to do troubleshooting.

We have 2 broadband connections in our house, one for home use that has a netgear on the end of it and in the last 2 years (touch wood) we have never had any issues.

In my office I have a Karoo Business connection, which Karoo sent me a Thomson Router which went straight in the bin and I have a Draytek Vigor 2800G connected and it is brilliant, no bottle necks at all, also has built in firewall and you can also block access to certain catagories of websites and also Vlan (Virtual Lan) each of the four interfaces so they have no connection with one and other. Wireless is brilliant get a very good range, infact I can connect from the bottom of my Garden with no problems at all.

They are a little more expensive but well worth it.

I just ditched my other halfs parents Thomson router for a Draytek I got on that auction website and you can see a marked difference already.

I cant believe Karoo dont warn against this and ask which system you are using when you sign up. I dont mind getting XP installed over the top of my Vista but it will cost me not them which pee's me off.

Mind you I saved some money by stealing a pair of Grey trousers from a shop in St Stephens the other day so that will cover it.

Karoo used to recommend Netgear but it seems they now favour Thomsen.

I'm on Karoo but have a Belkin which worked fine with my old XP laptop and works equally well with Vista on my current one.

Any problems I have experienced have been down to Karoo rather than the router.

For basic home use the Thomsons are ok.

Drayteks are in a different league though with regard to what they can do / stability etc.

I run Vista and have a Thompson router and have not had any problems since I got it.