As one Puget Sound corporate giant takes a giant leap forward, another has taken a step back in technology.  As Vista is launched by Microsoft, Boeing has announced that a planned wireless system for its 787 will not get off the ground.

Boeing says problems with bandwidth and regulatory requirements for wireless access points in numerous foreign states has made the wireless installation less appealing for the company.  At the same time, engineers discovered that not installing the wireless system and its access points will save precious pounds from the slimmed down two-engine aircraft.  The plane is being sold for its fuel efficiency at a time when airlines are battling rising fuel prices.

This probably means you won’t be getting on a plane any time soon, firing up the laptop and typing an email with the subject line “guess where I’m writing from?” Yet, the FCC continues to consider the possibility of allowing the use of cell phones in flight.  Anyone who has ever been on public transit while numerous people are talking on a cell phone can imagine what that will be like. 

Perhaps the day will come when airlines will institute a “cell phone” or “no cell phone” section on planes, like the “smoking” and “no smoking” sections of times gone by.  Pollution, after all, is pollution.

Posted by Barbara.

The Battle in Seattle — the SeaTac Airport skirmish in the war on Christmas — may be settled, but a more intense battle has ensued in the trenches, or cubicles.   This time, the enemy of Christmas is a relatively new combatant,  the wireless network.  

AirMagnet Inc, which analyzes the productivity of enterprise wireless networks, says little things like Christmas wreaths, tinsel and even the angel on top of a Christmas tree can interfere with the performance of a wireless network across the room.  AirMagnet says these interferences could diminish Christmas season wireless network performance by as much as 25 percent.  

The company says the interference can be reduced by clearing decorations from the path of access points, or moving the network connection a few inches.  But then, when you couple this with worker attention focused on shopping online and dipping into the leftover eggnog from the holiday party, one wonders how any business gets done in the month of December. 

Posted by Barbara.

Darren Bates, unlike W.C. Fields, would rather be in Philadelphia, than in a Georgia County Jail.   According to Georgia police sources, Mr. Bates likes to spend his time communicating with his My Space Friends from the local library when he is not committing anti-social acts that include alleged assault and the illegal acquisition of automobiles. Mr. Bates had been a resident of the Baldwin County Georgia Jail prior to his unscheduled departure. 

The local sheriff in Baldwin County traced the suspect to Philadelphia with the help of My Space officials.  The social networking site maintained records of the suspect’s frequent visit to the local library in Philadelphia and tipped off authorities to make the arrest during one of Bates’ regular visits. 

The arrest points out a deficiency in inmate education on modern technology.  A more technically savvy criminal might have figured out that user identities are cheaper than a dime a dozen and that public computers are available at more than one Philadelphia library branch.  

Perhaps inmates need to put those law books aside for a minute and look at the “Online Social Networking for Dummies” series.

Posted by Barbara

First it was no-name vendors trying to get an early lead in the dedicated Skype phone market. Then companies like D-Link, Linksys and Netgear came out with Skype phones over their own and since then more and more vendors have jumped on the bandwagon.

 

The latest is the 9630 from US Robotics. What's neat about this phone is that it can handle Skype calls via either the traditional USB-to-PC-to-Internet connectiopn or by simply plugging them into a regular land line in which case the phone actually functions like a regular phone that can also take Skype calls. That's pretty cool. All the other popular Skype phones can't do anything except Skype calls.

 

Other than that, it's a multi-handset phone that can handle up to four handsets in the house and it should retail for about $120 for the base unit and $70 for each expansion handset by September in the US.

 

(via Ubergizmo)

I already blogged on my fab experience with the Linksys WIP330 wireless VoIP phone. A good enough experience that I decided to drop MCI (hack, pitui) in favor of the much cheaper BroadVoice service. But there are other competing services out there. One that I almost bought was SunRocket. These guys don't bill monthly. You get a nationwide calling plan, a compatible phone, a few services (voice mailbox, etc.) for $200/year. That's right. You cut these guys a check once a year and you're good.

 

I didn't go with them because I didn't know enough about the service. Too bad that the guys at UberGizmo didn't write this review a couple of months ago when I was still on the market. They took the SunRocket service and wrote a really in-depth start-to-finish review of the service. Worth the read if you're thinking of taking the VoIP plunge.

 

(via UberGizmo)

ASUS has gone and set the bar for a home Internet gateway to a new high. The company just released the ASUS WL-700gE, and TweakTown did a review. The thing has an amazing feature set:

 

Acer's Ferrari line may well be one of the sexiest notebooks on the planet. Acer does quite a bit of work to keep this puppy both looking good and moving fast. Since CPUs are pretty much a flat field, Acer's gone ahead and looked for other ways to make the Ferrari speedier. They've settled on 802.11n wireless.

 

If you're running a WiFi network at home right now, chances are you're running either an 802.11b network (about 11Mbps and five+ years old) or 802.11g (25Mbps - 54Mbps and three+ years old). 802.11n is the next step and is supposedly capable of running up to 300Mpbs, but so far the WiFi vendors haven't been able to agree on a 100% bulletproof standard. The result is that the few 802.11n products we've reviewed haven't managed to get much beyond 115Mbps and they're also entirely proprietary--meaning that the 802.11n card in your PC needs to be from the same vendor as your 802.11n-capable router.

 

Acer's put Broadcom's Intensi-fi 802.11n chipset into the Ferrari, which could bump your wifi performance to the afore-mentioned 100+Mbps throughput rate--but only if you're also using Acer's InviLink Nplify wireless technologies. Don't expect any performance boost at Starbucks or the airport, but at home you could see some more Ferrari-like speed.

 

(via UberGizmo)

For all you gamers who enjoy blasting each other to smithereens during lengthy LAN parties, you know that network performance is almost as important as video performance in maintaining a competitive gaming experience. We network geeks might have argued this point in the past (at least a bit), but the new operating systems coming down the pike--especially Vista--are including smarter networking software. Vista, for example, will include a completely rebuilt TCP/IP stack as well as support for things like TCP offloading--that's where the CPU drops the task of lots of network processing onto a separate mini-CPU on the network interface card similar to the way in which a video card takes over the video calcs from the CPU.

Supporting these new technologies are numerous coporate-oriented network interface cards (NICs), but now there's some products being tossed gamers' way. The aptly named Killer Network Interface comes from Bigfoot and has its own 400MHz networking CPU and 64MB of dedicated processing RAM. Also supports gigabite Ethernet, CAT6 cabling (though pretty much any NIC can handle this) and even has another USB port in case you need another one of those.

Figure they're available in mid-August for about

(via Engadget)

You've seen the commericals: People do Stupid Things...followed by images of someone launching a baseball bat through a window or using a pogo stick as a suppository applicator. Those are from Vonage, one of the largest (and most in-debt) voice over IP (VoIP) telephone service providers out there--a service that uses the Internet to do full-service voice calls just like the Bells. The cable companies all have a service of their own that's priced a little higher, but there are also less well known competitors to Vonage that have even better deals--like BroadVoice that does a flat-rate nation-wide calling plan for about $20/mo.

 

So what's new about that? Wireless. Voice over IP can run over the WiFi network you've got setup in your house. Just get an account with a provider (Vonage, BroadVoice, Comcast, whoever), and the phone will find your wireless Internet connection, register itself with your provider over the Web and let you make calls.

 

Two things make this cool: First, voice quality is great. I just finished testing Linksys WIP330 WiFi VoIP phone for SMB IT, and unless I told people I was using a VoIP phone, no one knew. That's a major step up from only a year ago when this type of phone generally sounded one rung below a cell phone. Second, the phone doesn't care what Internet connection it's using. So right now, I'm typing this in a Starbucks in NYC and my Linksys is next to me. I can make calls, receive calls, whatever, using the Linksys which simply logged itself into my T-Mobile account. That means you can literally take your home or office phone with you as long as there's a Wireless Internet connection there.

 

Other vendors are coming out with wireless VoIP phones, too -- Jen DeLeo just posted on the new D-Link DPH-540 WiFi phone and Brian, Sasquatch and I checked out the ZyXEL P-2000W-v2 phone late last year. Brian and Sasquatch liked theirs so much they just paid ZyXEL for the units and kept them.

 

With Verizon just having managed to de-regulate itself and charge everyone higher prices for pretty much everything, moving to such a low-cost phone system is a no-brainer. And, yeah, Vonage and some of these others may go out of business or have the FCC pass some law that effectively kills independent VoIP services -- but that won't happen for at least a couple of years if it ever does. Meantime, two years of $20/mo is still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, no?

Dell just gave PC Mag a sneak peek at the new EV-DO Wireless 5700 Mobile Broadband ExpressCard. For those who don't know, EV-DO is Verizon's and Sprint's very fast broadband wireless service. Even faster than T-Mobile's EDGE service,  EV-DO is a great boon to folks who move around a lot in areas where EV-DO coverage is good. Right now that's typically urban areas, but we've tested it as far south from Manhattan as Elizabeth NJ.

 

Dell's 5700 is an OEMed version of the Novatel XV620, which PC Mag also reviewed, so it should work on non-Dell laptops, but Dell hasn't confirmed this yet. They also seem to have a Verizon-centric focus, offering the 5700 with 30 free days of Verizon's EV-DO, followed by $59.99/mo for existing Verizon voice customers and $79.99/mo for customers with no other Verizon plan. Pricing that in my mind restricts EV-DO to business users for now--that's way too expensive for personal use.

 

(via Gearlog)

I wrote a column on this several weeks ago for InfoWorld, but it's nice to get some independent verification. PC Mag just pubbed two reviews each on a brand new 802.11n WiFi router, the NetGear WNR854T and the Linksys WRT300N.

 

So, first, what's sexy about 802.11n over 11g? On paper, several things. First, bandwidth is supposed to double to over 100Mbps. In fact, it's theoretical limit is 300Mbps, which is why you'll see a lot of 802.11n products with that number in the model name. The 11n spec is also supposed to increase range--up to 200 feet with no loss in performance.

 

On paper. In real life, when I tested Linksys' early 11n router I didn't get more than 115Mbps and that only for a few seconds. And range seemed identical to 11g--and that's with both a router and a dedicated 11n PC Card. No word on what happens when an 11g user tries to use the same router.

 

PC Mag had similar experiences. Though the routers are well designed from a usage perspective, the performance of the 802.11n technology doesn't seem to justify buying one.

"People do stupid things...", seen those TV ads? Well, some people also spend loads of money advertising a low-cost phone system when maybe they should have been using a bit more of that money on tech development, legal research and political lobbying. Now, Vonage's pricing is still great on television, but the company is $400 million in debt after a nuclear disaster of an IPO, so no one knows how long all that fine pricing will last.

 

Meanwhile, Skype quietly released the ability to make regular calls over its VoIP service quite a while ago. Also released a spec. Mplat (which tragically sounds way too close to 'splat') took that spec and put together the Jumper S100. Vonage gives away its phone adapter. For $50, Mplat gives you the S100, which lets you turn a normal phone into a Skype phone complete with voice recording, voice mail, three-way calling and call forwarding.

 

You'll need to run software on your Windows  machine (and only Windows, by the way) to get these advanced features; but hey, at least now that PC guy has something to jeer about at that smug Apple guy on TV.

 

This gives you at least as good a phone plan as a Vonage user--usually quite a bit better--plenty of voice quality and knowledge that your phone is backed by a highly profitable giant, namely eBay, instead of one whose future is so uncertain.

 

(via Techie Diva)

Verizon is testing fiber to the home under the brand name "Verizon FiOS". Yeah, it was supposed to have rolled it out to 80 million households nationwide by now (along with the other telcos) but what's a decade or so of slow service and massive profits between friends.

 

Still no word on when it'll be available to more than just select (and tiny) test sites, but an old colleague at PC Mag, Lane Ulanoff, has the good fortune to be living in one of Verizon's FIOS service test areas. So he got the service and wrote up the experience here.

 

Makes you chomp at the bit for faster access.

 

(via Gearlog)

I posted on the Linksys WRT54G routing story several months ago. In short, the story goes like this: Linksys puts out the original WRT54G wireless router. Some folks buy it, plug it in, see a green link light on their wireless networking card and surf away happy. Finally, some geeky users buy it, dig around in it for a lil bit an discover that the router's operating system is based on Linux. This discovery spawns a host of 'hacked' WRT54G linux distros that can install on or over the router's existing operating system and provide loads more functionality.

 

Regular folks are happy with their basic WRT54G, geeks are happy with their modified WRT54Gs and Linksys is happy because it's selling WRT54G hardware like cheese at a rodent convention and it doesn't have to support the new hack operating systems because they've already issued a statement saying that if you install one of those it's at our own risk and your warranty is voided. Nobody cares and sales zoom on.

 

Then they screw it up. Instead of continuing with the existing WRT54G Linux operating system, they decide to go with a proprietary routing operating system from VxWorks. No real reason why other than to sell a product that makes their customer less happy. Linux customers naturally grumbled loudly at this move, so the company announced it would keep the Linux version available under the name WRT54GL with "L" standing for Linux.

 

So now the WRT54G V5 is on your CompUSA and BestBuy shelf, and carrying the non-modifiable VxWorks OS. Some stores carry the WRT54GL, but for the most part you have to buy that off the Web. Not such a big hassle, except that Linksys just came out and said it wasn't going to guarantee how long the WRT54GL was going to stay available.

 

So given the possible limited lifespan of the WRT54GL, the guys at Toms Hardware decided to take a close look at the WRT54G V5 to see just how badly is sucked. Apparently, quite a bit according to this review. Get your WRT54GLs while they last.

 

One of the biggest peeves with putting the Penguin on a laptop is that until recently, Linux's support for WiFi was unreliable at best. If you're a real propeller head and like doing device driver programming, then sometimes it might have been fun. But for those of us who just want to use WiFi networking, not re-invent it, the process was just too cumbersome.

 

Well look out because a new 802.11x software stack is being released for Linux by Devicescape, a software stack specialist. The software is being released directly in open source under the GPL license, so most anyone should be able to grab it for mods, and it's surprisingly well fleshed out. Don't expect support for the latest 802.11n technology, but that's not what this release is about. This release is about supplanting the existing hodge podge of Linux wireless drivers with a professionally built baseline protocol stack that can be used an upgraded to the latest standards by other Linux projects.

 

Still be some time before this gets to us end-users, but the fact that it's out there is another feather in Tux's cap for sure.

 

(via Digg)

I know I ding Verizon a lot because...well, they're evil. But I live in the greater NYC area, so not only am I under the evil's thumb, I'm also privy to their latest bandwidth offerings--the few times in one human's life time that they actually do this.

 

The hot number today is EV-DO, which I talked about peripherally during my recent post on WiMAX and wireless broadband in general. Wireless braodband, again, being the concept of taking a cable modem/DSL-speed Internet connection with you wherever you go--feet, trains, planes and automobiles. Okay, probably not planes. Now, as I stated in the previous post, WiMAX may be better, faster, etc. than EV-DO; but WiMAX is still a dream for the end of 2006 or (far more likely) the deeper parts of 2007. EV-DO is here. Now. And it ain't bad.

 

The still-strikingly-named Sascha Segan over at PC Magazine, managed to get his grubby hands on a new EV-DO PC Card from Novatel, the X620. Works like any other PC Card -- plug it in, setup drivers, make sure it knows you're Verizon EV-DO account information and you're off to the races.

 

Because PC Mag and Segan are also in the NYC area, he's using the same EV-DO service that Verizon's selling the rest of us. So he ran some real-world throughput tests on the connection and the results are impressive. Even for Verizon. The actual Novatel card is still in late beta, but check out the preview anyway--not just for the Novatel specs, but for the looksee at Verizon's EV-DO service in action.

 

 

If you've managed to find a used PC with USB 2, but no WiFi or Bluetooth, then this is the device for you. And if you think that sounds like a setup, you're wrong. One of the first things to go on my last three notebooks was the WiFi radio. These subsystems burnout and there's no replacing them without replacing the entire motherboard. Your best bet is to disable the old connections permanently and install a third-party device like this one from TRENDnet.

 

The TRENDnet 802.11g & Bluetooth Combo USB Adapter sums up its whole life in the name (otherwise known by the even less sexy moniker: TBW-103UB). It looks like a USB thumbdrive and install almost as easily. But instead of storage, you get 802.11g wireless and Bluetooth radios--they even work simulataneously and with surprisingly good performance numbers. That and a price tag of $60 makes them a great wireless replacement device for any notebook--or desktop for that matter.

Solwise just introed the PL-85PEW, a combo of powerline technology and wireless.

 

I had Netgear powerline running at my old house. Just plug the adapter in an open electrical socket and a matching plug in another socket and you've got a 10Mbps Ethernet connection. Just make sure it's running in a house where you own the fuse box. Shared apartment building fuse boxes or office building-style power distributors tend to confuse these little things.

 

So why combine wireless with this puppy? I mean, powerline is used as an easy way to network two rooms in the home; wireless is used as an easy way to connect two rooms in the home. So why both?

 

Because supposedly it gives more range. Look for one in the States sometime this summer. I'll see if it really works as adverted.

 

(via Ubergizmo)

If you've got a broadband connection and an 802.11g WiFi network in your house, you can sign up for a number of broadband-based VoIP services in place of paying the telecomm robber barons their inflated prices. Think I'll do a Tech Novice post on that this weekend.

 

Meantime, if VoIP services like Vonage interest you, don't think you're relegated to simply using phones that plug into those Linksys routers of theirs. Those are just bridges between an analog phone (your old phone) and the VoIP world.

 

There are several new phone products coming out that are specifically built for WiFi VoIP, so they don't need one of those router bridges. One such is the D-Link DPH-540. Not only is a wireless phone that's made to run over WiFI, it's also a built as a cute little flip phone.

 

It works with any VoIP Internet service provider, and you can even register the device with those folks directly--no PC required. It's got plenty of range (according to D-Link) and supports advanced features, too, like WPA security, SMS text messaging, Web browsing and even email.

 

She'll cost $250 and you can look for her this summer.