Yeah, I just thought it was comical. The purpose of such a wizard is to make it 'easy' for novices to setup but a novice would definitely need to be instructed on how to connect and power on the damn thing because obviously the wizard can't do what it needs to do until everything is connected and powered on.
The wizard does work if you connect everything properly first but it doesn't truly setup everything. For example, it never asked me for my time zone and automatically set it to Pacific Standard Time - now could that be the default because Netgear is located in California? You betcha. A novice would never go through all the admin pages and find that setting. The router's idea of the time would always be wrong just like the VCR clock in many households.
The router does work flawlessly which is the same as every other Netgear router I've owned. Next time I'll go straight to the admin pages and do it manually like I usually do.