Hi,
As I recently posted, one of my main wireless routers (DI-764 802.11a/b) finally died completetly after six years of use. The 802.11a radio had died a few months back, but by then I was only using the router portion of the DI-764 as I had a WAP (DWL-7100AP 802.11a/gb) attached to it.
I've since ordered a wired router to replace the old DI-764 (waiting on it to arrive from Newegg), but thought I would play around with the old DI-764 and see if I could actually fix the thing. Upon opening it up, I noticed that one cap had completely bursted while another one was buldging. First trip to a Radio Shack proved fruitless as that particular store (at a mall) no longer sold components. The sales clerk didn't even know what a capacitor was. She kept asking me if it was some sort of interconnect!
Anyway, today while lunch at work, I went to a regular Radio Shack and got new caps. I then soldered the new caps onto the mainboard and the DI-764, to me disbelief, was fully operational again!
Once I got home, I decided to look into another D-Link WAP that I have since it has just started acting a little flakey. Sure enough, one of the caps inside it is starting to buldge. This particular WAP has only been running for a little over a year.
Ok, I guess I shouldn't really complain about six years of 24/7 operation, but should they be crapping out after only a year? Is D-Link saving a few pennies by using poor quality caps?