After purchasing two consumer grade gigabit switches, the NetGear GS108 and the Linksys SD2008, and having them both fail I really started to think if gigabit was ready for the consumer. I would have to say from my experience with consumer grade gigabit switches that it is definitely not ready for prime time.
The good news is as a consumer you can still have gigabit, you just may pay a little bit more for it. I would recommend purchasing business class switches. The switches I'm using are the Dell PowerConnect 2708 which I'm very impressed with thus far; though it does not take much to impress me at this point, staying turned on is enough:)