Tag: modem

D-Link launches DIR-825 modem – aka the "route-master general"

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It’s not every day I consider spending £129.99 on a wireless router but then it’s not everyday you meet the D-Link DIR-825. Naturally, we’re talking draft-N wireless here, backwards compatible with all the other standards and it goes without saying that all four of its LAN connections are gigabit Ethernet.

There’s also a gig WAN port too as well as a USB Shareport where you can plug a printer or other such device that can then be accessed wirelessly by any computer on the network. The router supports quadband wireless at 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies for separation of signals and an easier way to prioritise your bandwidth between simpler browsing tasks at the lower level and the likes of HD streaming at the top.

You’re getting a better penetrating and faster signal and it still manages to maintain the green standards that D-Links to have in place. It also supports the IPv6 should the rest of your equipment be sufficiently advanced. It’s available from now in the UK.

D-Link Buy it

Daniel Sung Peripherals

Contract laptops to come with kill-switch

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A growing trend among phone networks is to start offering netbooks and other low-cost laptops free to customers of their mobile broadband services. What happens, though, if the contract owner stops paying up? They lose kit worth hundreds of pounds that’s still in fully working order.

As a result, LM Ericsson AB, a Swedish company that produces laptop modems, has added a feature to its hardware that can remotely ‘kill’ a laptop, rending it useless. If carriers desire, then they can stop a customer who hasn’t paid up from using his or her machine.

It could also be used to secure lost or stolen machines – locking them down remotely. It’s a nice idea, but I’d be concerned about the risk of these devices malfunctioning, stopping legitimate customers from accessing services that they’ve paid for.

(via Yahoo!)

Duncan Geere Computer Security, Computers, Laptops / Notebooks

MiFi – a pocket-sized wireless hotspot from Novatel Wireless

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You’d be amazed at how many conferences lack something that I consider to be akin to running water and oxygen – internet access. Just as you’ve got comfortable in your seat near the back of the room, you open up your laptop, wait a few seconds for Linux to resume, and then utterly fail to find any open wireless hotspots.

Rather than fiddling with trying to use your phone as a modem, just connect to the MiFi. It uses high-speed HSDPA to connect to access the net via cell networks, meaning that you won’t get much signal in the wilds of Norfolk, but given that there are very few conferences in the wilds of Norfolk, you should be okay.

The internal rechargeable battery in this thing will support up to 40 hours of standby time and 4 hours of actual use without power. It’ll be available in the States in early 2009 via broadband carriers, so we might see someone like Three distribute thing alongside its existing D100 plug-in model.

Novatel Wireless (via PC World)

Related posts: 3 launches D100 wireless router for dongles | New Netgear routers, promise routing, will probably deliver

Duncan Geere Wi-Fi

Use your iPhone as a 3G modem… but maybe Stateside-only

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It’s functionality that’s already available for a range of popular phones, including the N95, the Skypephone S2, and the forthcoming INQ Facebook phone, but it’s something that a lot of iPhone users would kill for – the ability to use the iPhone as a 3G modem.

The iPhone’s carrier in the USA, AT&T, announced last night that it would release some software to enable this functionality on the device. There has previously been two options for using your iPhone as a 3G modem, but one was removed from the App store and the other only works on jailbroken iPhones.

It’ll almost certainly cost users more money, and the connection won’t be fast enough to do much more than load a few websites, but it’s a nice feature addition to the device, for US users. I wonder if O2 has anything similar in the works over here.

AT&T (via Technologizer)

Related posts: Skypephone S2 offers this functionality out of the box | So will the INQ Facebook phone

Duncan Geere iPhone, Mobile phones