Netgear PS101 be careful OLD product

If you're gonna get one, "good" serial number starts with 10y259bx..." all the others started with "10y2596..." and had OLD firmware.

They had these on sale on Sunday for $10 after rebate. I bought one in Salem, NH store and had issues installing XP with it. I connected to it via http and .. could not do anything to it but see the factory info onscreen and change the pbuttword. It was late -store closed, so I went to Netgear website to check if maybe firmware updates and the last update was #6029 in Sept 2004. I just bought this 12-05 - and mine had fw #6024 and the Cd with it was dated 2003 ! I downloaded the zip file and - it's a BIN file - that's all . No info on website on what to do with it HOW to upgrade the fw. I checked their forums and FULL of people complaining about support . I found threads asking "how to update firmware?" going back 18 months up thru last week. I figured: "That's it - I'll just return it." I left a note to Netgear support that they ought to reads the threads for all of their products because the entire forum is FULL of people complaining. Yesterday I went to CompUSA to return it. On the ride there, I was thinking ...if I could get it to work - for $10 it's a good deal. SO I told them my problem , checked the store inventory and found ONE that had a much higher serial number. I swapped mine for it and brought it home. It worked - still not latest firmware (6026) but it worked. I checked back in the Netgear forum and for the PS101 thread it now has a pointer to the upgrade file. (maybe they read my email ?) I downloaded it - upgraded the firmware and .. now it looks-works great. If you're familiar with HP printserver screens - this is very simliar. But be careful - pay attention to the serial numbers: "good" serial number starts with 10y259bx and had #6026 fw, all the others started with "10y2596..." and had very OLD firmware. MAYBE just this one store, but they had about 30 of them in stock - they said that they sell quite a few - so SOMEONE's warehousing them. In any case, the pointer to the UPDATE program for Netgear printservers is: ftp:--downloads.netgear.com-files-ps121upgradeutility.zip