wifi

Price Watch: Brother HL-2170W Wi-Fi laser printer down to $89.99 shipped

Remember the Brother HL-2170W from last month? It's a small-footprint, small-office laser printer that offers both Ethernet and Wi-Fi network connectivity. (USB, too.) Now it's 10 bucks cheaper, selling for just $89.99 shipped from Buy.com. It's a new unit, not a refurb, and you don't have to deal with any rebates.

My original post has all the deets you need on this printer, which remains a favorite in the Cheapskate household. It's rare enough to find an Ethernet-equipped laser in this price range, but one with Wi-Fi as well? The HL-2170W stands alone.… Read more

Cable hedges its wireless bets

It's mobile or bust for cable operators that seem to be trying anything and everything to get into the wireless market.

One of the biggest shifts over the next decade in the cable market is likely to be a move toward wireless services. As cable operators face stiff competition from phone companies, cable operators large and small are looking for ways to take their services mobile.

Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., talked up his company's investment in a new joint venture to blanket the country with 4G, or fourth-generation, wireless … Read more

Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. Why?

There is no business model behind it, but mesh Wi-Fi company Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi access to San Francisco, one neighborhood at a time, as I discovered when I passed by the company's folksy demo table at my local farmers' market last month (see report from local newspaper). But Meraki is not in the business of just blasting money out the door, which it appears to be doing in San Francisco, and there is a method to this program.

Meraki's business is actually quite straightforward: it sells wide-area Wi-Fi network hardware, and provides the management consoles to … Read more

Trendnet makes it a snap to upgrade to Draft N

It's hard to find laptop that doesn't have built-in Wi-Fi these days. As a matter of fact, if you buy a new and relatively high-end model, such as the Dell XPS M1330 (which I have and really like), chances are your laptop even has built-in 802.11n card.

Even though the new N specification (officially called Draft N 2.0) is not yet ratified as a standard, more people are taking advantage of this specification for throughput gain. In theory, the N specification can offer speed up to 300Mbps, that's three times of the regular wired connection. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 724: YOU are!

It's episode 724, wherein we argue, but in a happy way. MySpace wins a $234 million antispam judgment they'll probably never collect, and Google blurs faces in Street view, maybe just to be nice. Also, it turns out seniors are more acutely aware of the passing of time (or they hate commercials more than the youngsters do) and Qtrax makes four improbable deals. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 724

Note: We are making a change to our podcast feed system on Monday, May 19. However, you do not need to subscribe to a new feed. One … Read more

iPass to add in-flight Wi-Fi roaming

Mobile Internet aggregator iPass it teaming up with in-flight broadband provider Aircell to give its customers access to broadband on planes.

On Tuesday, iPass announced that it would offer Wi-Fi roaming with Aircell Gogo, an in-flight broadband service expected to launch soon in the United States. Aircell's service is expected later this year on American Airlines and Virgin America.

iPass provides mobile Internet access for a monthly fee. Users can connect via Wi-Fi, dial-up or Ethernet using a single user password. Monthly services include all three connectivity options and cost between $29.95 per month for unlimited Wi-Fi in … Read more

EarthLink ditches Philly Wi-Fi network

EarthLink said Tuesday that it is pulling the plug on its citywide Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia.

EarthLink issued a press release on Tuesday stating that it was unable to find a buyer for the $17 million network that has been 80 percent completed. It also claimed that after months of negotiations with the city and a nonprofit group interested in running the network, it was unable to close the deal.

Chris Putala, a spokesman for EarthLink wouldn't identify the nonprofit group. But a Philadelphia Inquirer article named the nonprofit as Cleveland-based OneCommunity, an organization that provides a fiber network … Read more

Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi answers 'Where was I?'

When we reviewed Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi card for digital cameras back in November, it was but a lonely single child in the company's product portfolio. Today, Eye-Fi announced the birth of siblings, creating a tiered product line of SD add-in cards that deliver Wi-Fi connectivity--and now more--to digital cameras.

The kid bound to get the most attention is the Eye-Fi Explore, a $129 card with two notable features. First, the company has teamed up with Skyhook Wireless to provide geotagging for your photos; Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning system essentially triangulates your location via queries to local wireless access points. … Read more

A word of warning about 'free' public Wi-Fi

I recently found myself in an airport terminal with a laptop and time to kill. Not knowing what the Wi-Fi options were, I let Windows XP search for available wireless networks. As you can see below, one of the networks was called "Free Public WiFi". If this happens to you, don't connect to a network like this.

The first two networks are each labeled "Unsecured wireless network". Fine. But the Free Public WiFi network is described by Windows as an "Unsecured computer-to-computer network". As the name implies, this network connects to a computer … Read more