[geeks] Managed gigabit switch recommendations for the home?

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 14:26 -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
> > Most of my machines are gigabit, but my switch is an older 3Com
> > SuperStack, and new switches worth having are more than I wanted to pay
> > right now.
> >
> > If anyone has recommendations for good gigaswitches that aren't expensive,
> > I'm all ears.
> 
> I'm assuming you're interested in managed switches, and I recently was
> interested in the same thing, did some initial looking, and thought this
> might be ok for a home network managed gigabit switch, but don't have any
> experience with it:
> 
> HP J9029A 10/100/1000Mbps ProCurve Switch 1800-8G $154
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833316053
> 
> Anyone with any thoughts/experience?  On paper it looks good to me because
> it is managed, it doesn't have any fans so wouldn't be noisy on a desk,
> and has an ok number of ports for the price.

How can that properly be managed without a serial port?

I wish I could find something that was both fanless and had a single
optical or gbic port for low money.  Either that or a cheap source for
media converters.