Linksys' Wi-Fi extender is an elegant slim box designed to be hung on the wall, high up preferably.

It's a wireless extender and so takes the signal from your existing router and rebroadcasts or repeats the signal. Recent firmware bestowed WPA wireless security on this device which was beginning to show its age.

Talking of which, if you're mad enough to run an unprotected wireless network, setting up the Linksys WRE54G couldn't be simpler – you press the auto-configure button on the side and when both the link and activity status LEDs turn blue you're in business.

If you run a secure Wi-Fi network you need to temporarily hook up an Ethernet cable to it (the port is hidden away under a flap) and run the setup wizard on the installation CD.

Bizarrely, it could not detect the Linksys WRE54G, despite being directly connected to it and so we had to resort to manually setting up, via the device's Web interface.