I had a WRT54G at my parents house and at my house at college. The one at my parents house lasted about a year before we had to reboot it every few hours because it was dropping connections, the one at college lasted about 2 months. Replaced both of them with WGR614s and have had no problems on either.
Cheap routers are hit or miss though. Some have better luck than others. If I had 600 bucks, I'd get a Cisco 871W 😀