Motorola SURFboard SBG900 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway (Black)
Review by L. Manning Vines : Ideal product. Reasonable price, easy setup, great function.

Bought this direct from Amazon based on the great price, combo features, and good reviews and was not disappointed. I use mine with an Apple Powerbook. Literally took it out of the box, plugged it into the wall, plugged it into the computer with an ethernet cable, called my cable company with my MAC address, modified some modem settings and activated WEP (as instructed in the pdf manual), disconnected the ethernet cable. and was surfing wirelessly in less than 20 mins. Range is great too in my 1200sqft two story townhome. Three to four bars throughout including my patio out back. Can't comment on further extent of range for those of you living in mansions. Overall, great product.... am very satisfied. Would definitely purchase again.

Motorola SURFboard SBG900 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway (Black)
Review by a cloudy day : great products at reasonable price

This products works perfectly with my Dell laptop and customer services are helpful. The only catch is actually from my Windows XP operation system: you need to download a patch from Microsoft for the wireless part to work appropriately. Overall, the products works beyond my expectation and after three weeks I have nor have any problem.

Motorola SURFboard SBG900 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway (Black)
Review by C. Coppola : SBG900 instant setup!

I started by calling my internet provider(Cox). Once they registered the correct MAC ID the modem worked almost instantly. I never even opened the CD that came with the modem. I configured the modem from a wired connection on my laptop, including setting up a WEP key, then I was able to set up the wireless connection later. I also have two other computers wirelessly connected. We have a large(>3000sqft colonial) house and one of the pc's is in a family room over the garage at the oposite end of the house. After configuring the keys on those computers they easily connected wirelessly. I walked in every room of our house with the laptop and my connection was 100% at all times. I still plan on attaching my printer to the USB port but don't have the correct cable yet so I can't comment on that aspect.

So far I'm thrilled!

Motorola SURFboard SBG900 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway (Black)
Review by Lee Millar : Thank God for no brainer electronics

I did my homework before purchasing the SBG900 and read the reviews on Amazon to get a feel for the product. Most of the reviews have been extremely positive, but there have been a couple of questionable ones dealing with certain issues; the range for starters. Would this be a problem in an average size house? The software; would it be too complicated for the average user to adjust security settings, etc., and would it be reliable while running all sorts of programs at the same time without it losing its connection and crashing. Everything about this product has made my life easier because prior to that I had just rented a scientific webstar modem from cox cable which had infuriated me to the point that it was about to become a projectile out the window. It wouldn't work well with my Vonage phone service, it would crash constantly when I was using Vonage while surfing, it wouldn't allow a USB connection from the computer....I could go on. Needless to say drastic measures had to be taken and I purchased the Motorola SBG900 with optimism. I can't explain how easy it was to get everything up and running with this unit. Step by step, unboxed the modem, hooked it up, connected the USB cable to my computer, ran the software, made sure the firewall was turned off for vonage. Called up Cox, registered my Mac ID. started surfing from the USB connection while on the phone. Hung up the phone, activated WEP on my wireless cards and entered the key on the wireless settings in Windows XP, checked the speed online 6.4mb download and 550K upload ( 6mb connection from cox is the plan I'm on ), no complaints there. Took the laptops all over the house, out into the garden and nearly halfway down the street; still had a strong wireless signal everywhere. Ran as many software internet sucking programs at the same time while using Vonage and not once did the modem crash, lose sound on the phone or miss a beat while surfing. Bottom line is if you want to make life easy for you without worrying about separate routers, unreliable and cheap cable modems, then seriously think about buying this product as life is too short and its such a relief when something works straight out of the box and works well.

Motorola SURFboard SBG900 DOCSIS 2.0 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway (Black)
Review by John R. Sedivy : Motorola SBG900

I purchased this device today and feel obliged to write a review as I had used the reviews on this site to make the decision for the purchase. For starters I had a similar experience as most of the other reviewers. To provide a bit of background I was connecting one Macintosh, one PC and a Vonage device to the modem, I use Comcast as my Internet Service Provider(ISP). I am replacing a RCA modem and a Netgear router.

The modem took only a couple of minutes to setup, and similar to one of the other reviewers, I waited for over 15 minutes for registration of the MAC address with Comcast. Once registered I was able to connect instantly with the Macintosh - no issues whatsoever, which I have found to be typical of Apples. I had a bit of difficulty with the PC, not sure why, but the problem literally resolved itself! I suspect this is an issue with my PC, rather than the modem. In any case it works flawlessly now.

I experienced quite a bit of difficulty with the Vonage device and spent about two hours with the tech support. The issue ultimately was the firewall setting on the cable modem. Again, I do not believe this is an issue with the modem but rather an issue that Vonage would likely experience with any device. I believe it was more an issue with poor Vonage tech support.

Here is a quick breakdown:

Benefits: Excellent packaging, ability of one device to take the place of two (router and modem in one), reasonable price, increased speed performance when compared to my previous modem - both in terms of speed and range (which is admittedly a roughly three year old RCA 802.11g model), ability to connect via Ethernet and Universal Serial Bus (USB).

Disadvantages: Would have been nice to have a second Ethernet port, but not really a necessity.

In summary I believe this to be an excellent cable modem and probably the best on the market. The price is reasonable given the functionality and it was great to eliminate the wireless router and accompanying wires.