I had a Belkin wireless router - and left it turned on for two years, as it's in the loft here. It died, and they sent me another FOC.
I've three USB adaptors, all by Netgear. Two have died, and I've been sent replacements FOC.
The issue on reliability is really one of the cost of the aggro and downtime when they fail. It's a given that such an item will fail, eventually. Since I work from home, and use the web all the time, the answer is to have a spare. I didn't have a spare router, and that cost me 1.5 days downtime. My fault
