LinkSys Range Expander - Flaky

A fortnight ago I paid £60 for a WRE54G Range Expander by Linksys. I am simply unable to set it up, so its going back to PC World.

I have spent a couple of hours computing virtually every day since 1984 and have never had professional help, but I CANNOT make this thing work. I'm going for Homeplugs.

Has anyone else tried one of these?

I've bought at various times, for different purposes, three different Linksys models, which were all DOA.

One was refunded and a D-Link bought instead.

The other two were replaced and worked, but both have been disappointing either in terms of the feature set or flaky firmware.

Take yours back to the shop and get your money back.

Not sure if you are after advice or not?!
I have done nothing else in my life except IT since 1976 and I am always learning new stuff. Will never stop learning IMHO.

But from reading other sites and reviews, everyone who has bought one says they are "brilliant" !

They appear to work with just abut any make of router, although their address is normally 192.168.0.240 this can be changed. If you are MAC filtering then don't forget to "let it in" etc etc.

If you want to read lots of reviews and "some" tips, then here would be a good place to start etc
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/79363/show_product_rev...

The problem with the WRE54G is that people mis-understand how it works. Some assume that it somehow picks up the wireless signal and "boosts" it, when in fact all it's doing is receiving data and re-transmitting it. In places where wi-fi reception is already "flaky" due to local reflections caused by metalwork in the house, all you can end up doing is compounding the problem, because you now have two separate wireless links. If the signal arriving at the WRE54G is already bad, then it won't be able to do much with it.