Thanks to the dedicated hardware modem, it is blisteringly fast. In tests, its ping time is, on average, 10ms less than a USB modem like the Alcatel 'frog'.

....I've no idea at all whether that is good bad or indifferent!

Don't worry about it - it doesn't really make a lot of difference, that kind of stuff is more aimed at teenagers wanting to get a split-second advantage over their opponents in games. Most of the advantage comes from moving off the USB bus, routers all use one of a handful of chips inside.

From your POV, the most important thing is ease of setup - and while Netgear and Linksys seem to be the usual recs there, all I can say is that my new Netgear Rangemax Next router was an absolute dream to setup, whereas my old Linksys could be a bit of a PITA. New Linksys' may be better, I don't know, but I've had no problems with reliability. I certainly don't know anything about Actiontecs.

The other thing that's vaguely relevant is the ADSL standard used - make sure it's at least ADSL2, preferably ADSL 2+. May seem a bit irrelevant now, but you might as well have it, and it may help with tricky connections at the end of long runs from the exchange.