Wi-Fi (Home Networking)

It’s easy for early adopters to forget that not everyone has a good wireless router. I was painfully reminded of that this Thanksgiving when I brought a laptop with me to my parents’ house. I had to give up trying to surf the Web after I was only able to get 2 bars of connectivity when sitting just down the hall from their ancient 802.11b router. Even worse, I discovered that the router did not support WPA encryption, leaving them less than secure.

Fortunately, I was able to find a D-Link 802.11n router selling for only $19.99 and I bought it to give my parents as a holiday gift. You too can get a new 802.11n or 802.11g router for under $40. If you’re at less than N speed at home, now is a great time to upgrade. If you’re shopping for friends and family, a high-speed router is a gift that benefits both you and its recipient. Once my parents get their new router, I’ll be able to surf the Web at high speeds whenever I visit.

Here the best router deals I found this Black Friday.

Wireless Routers

• D-Link DIR-615 802.11n Router for $19.99. Includes 4-port 10/100 switch for wired connections. (Buy)
• TRENDnet TEW-639GR 802.11n Router for $39.99. Speeds up to 300 Mbps and gigabit Ethernet.  (Buy)
• Linksys WRT120N 802.11n Router for $39.99 A solid router with 4 ethernet ports and all the standard goodies. (Buy)
• ASUS WL-520GU 802.11g Router for $29.99 after $10 rebate. This router does not support 802.11n, but receives very high marks from users and features a USB 2.0 port that can act as a print server. It also supports open-source DD-WRT firmware updates. (Buy)

When I first saw this story from Popular Mechanics about new bus stops that would offer free Wi-Fi in San Francisco (in 2013, anyway), I immediately thought of the CrunchPad. Remember how I said that a web-app only device wouldn’t do well until free wireless access was more ubiquitous? Well, that time is coming.

How long before people start clamoring for Wi-Fi on public buses? If Bolt Bus can offer this and still keep prices low, surely it wouldn’t be hard to implement on a larger scale? In-flight Wi-Fi isn’t so rare anymore. The last bastion of connection-free space is underground, and even that’s not universally true.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has been incrementally updating its Zune music player with software tweaks, but it is time for a whole new device. Today Microsoft confirmed that it will launch the next generation of the Zune this fall.

The Zune HD, as its name implies is all about the high-definition. It has a built-in HD Radio receiver and high-definition video output capabilities. Additionally it will have a HD output that lets you playback 720p video files from the device through a HDMI docking station directly to an HDTV. It also has an OLED touch screen, Wi-Fi and an Internet browser.

While we are a bit skeptical about the HD radio functionality (it just hasn’t really taken off), we are absolutely looking forward to seeing the new form factor. The OLED touch screen which will allow for fliping through music, movies and other content with multi-touch gestures sounds sweet.

Zune also annouced that it will be a premium partner in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace and will bring TV and film to the platform.

Until now, in-flight Wi-Fi has felt like a novelty. Sure, Aircell, the biggest provider, has been around a little while. We’ve even gotten hands-on with its GoGo service. But when an airline like American Airlines reserves it for just 15 long-distance domestic flights, it doesn’t exactly feel mainstream.

Today, though, the carrier announced plans to expand GoGo service to 318 planes, an ambitious plan that will cost $100,000 per aircraft. Although all of these flights will be domestic, you can at least hope to be on a Wi-Fi enabled flight if you’re not flying, say, from New York to California.

Currently, GoGo costs $7.95 for mobile devices, $9.95 for flights shorter than three hours, and $12.95 for flights longer than three hours. For the money, the connection isn’t fast: 3.1 megabits per second.

Don’t worry, though; this doesn’t mean planes will become as noisy as commuter rail: VoIP calls will still be prohibited. (Ed. note: Amen to that!)

Better late than never. T-Mobile today announced its webConnect USB Laptop Stick  ($49.99 with a 2-year contract, plus $59.99 per month for 5GB of data), the carrier’s first 3G mobile broadband solution for notebooks. T-Mobile is years behind the competition when it comes to rolling out 3G modems, but this product has a few things going for it.

For starters, T-Mobile is throwing in unlimited HotSpot usage with the $59.99 monthly data fee, which means you’ll be able to access any of T-Mobile’s 10,000+ national Wi-Fi networks, even in places like Starbucks where the carrier roams on AT&T to provide coverage. The dongle, made by Huawei Technologies, also supports  international roaming (although T-Mobile doesn’t yet offer international data plans).

The second feature that is somewhat unique is the T-Mobile’s bandwidth usage meter, which lets you view how much data you’ve already used throughout the month. Other carriers like AT&T offer similar solutions online, but T-Mobile’s meter is conveniently built directly into the Connection Manager. T-Mobile says a pending software update which will enable the meter and provide charts of data usage patterns.

The problem is that T-Mobile’s 3G footprint is nowhere near as deep as the other major U.S. carriers. Read the rest of this entry »

$1,539 for a netbook?! That’s  the thought that went through my head shortly after AT&T announced late last year that it would be offering the 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One with embedded 3G for $99—requiring a two-year, $60 per month contract, through RadioShack.

Actually, according to AT&T, the sales of this subsidized Aspire One are exceeding its expectations (though its unclear what those were). The carrier argues that buyers of that netbook think of it more as a cell phone than a PC and are willing to spend more to have anytime, anywhere mobile broadband.

Still, there’s no question that AT&T would be able to attract many more subsidized netbook buyers if it offered a wider array of 3G pricing options. Glenn Lurie, president of emerging devices and resale for AT&T Mobility and consumer markets, talked to us about this topic and more. Here are the highlights:

• Netbooks need to offer even longer battery life, as well as instant-on access across the board, to be more compelling wireless devices.
• We’ll likely see at least one smart phone maker jump into the netbook game. (Who knows, maybe HTC will produce a better device than the Shift next time around.) Read the rest of this entry »

We had a chance to check out iRiver’s latest offerings here at CES, including the WAVE Internet Phone and the Wave Home Multimedia Communication Device.

The Wave internet phone lets you place phone calls through VoIP accounts like Skype to regular handsets wherever there’s an available Wi-Fi hotspot. We like the white coloring and the overall industrial design of the device, including its sensitive touch screen, but it still feels a bit late to the market. Skype phones were a bit popular a few years ago, and they weren’t all that popular, but iRiver builds on the idea by adding additional features like the 7-inch LCD display, support for SMS messaging, a music and video player, an e-dictionary, an FM radio, and more. The device was lighter than we thought it would be, and it’s a novel idea to take a device that can stand alone as a fully dedicated PMP and add in native VoIP support. Read the rest of this entry »

Streaming media from your computer to your TV isn’t hard, but creating a home network with attached storage and accessing that storage easily can be tough for newcomers. Cisco has tackled this barrier with its new Linksys by Cisco Media Hub, a standalone device that comes in both 500GB and 1TB flavors with a single hot-swappable The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.
Learn Morehard drive bay. When it’s plugged into your home network and your TV, it displays a beautiful user interface that you can easily view your music, movies, or photos on across your home network.

It’s intelligent too; if you have two copies of a specific CD across your network, it will only display one so that you’re not stumbling through duplicate listings while trying to choose a song.

Read on for a gallery of the new Linksys devices and more on the Media Hub. Read the rest of this entry »

Like other wireless digital photo frames, the Ipevo Kaleido R7 ($199, March) allows users to stream photos, untethered. What makes it different, though, is that it works with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices, so you can stream camera phone pictures as well.

With the help of EyeStage software, users can stream Web content like weather and photo feeds. Most other wireless frames do this, too, but many of them use FrameChannel’s service, which makes it hard to tell some of these models apart. We’ll be curious to see if this new software is truly a breath of fresh air.

Netgear today announced a host of exciting devices for use in the home.

New Routers
The first announcement was its 802.11a/b/g/n RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Modem Router (DGND3300) which operates using both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, to help prevent interference. This ADSL2+ router (it’s for DSL users) offers a unique Push ‘N’ Connect feature for easy and secure installation and setup. The router uses 8 internal antennas to help maintain a strong signal range. We like that it also automatically upgrades to the latest firmware, and its sleek design; it looks just like prior generations of Netgear routers, but it’s black. Read the rest of this entry »