Picked up one of these little things, the other day, since my ‘A’ wireless setup at home frazzed out.

I’ve had my issues with Mac, but I have to say, this thing is awesome. Plug it in to the wall, plug the cable in from the DSL modem, run a little config utility to set a name and password, and it’s done.

The new version is ‘n’ capable (as is the MacBook, now). Just to test, I hauled the MacBook outdoors and across the street – it saw the net (from my basement) just fine.

It supports a/b/g/n, so my Win tablet with the Atheros ‘a’ card can see it just fine (which is good, because I doubt if ‘n’ is available on that vintage machine.) The only downside is my really ancient machines that use the old Orinoco cards are dead in the water, especially since they can’t support WPA/WPA2 security.

Ces’t la vie. I’ll get some ‘n’ USB dongles and use those where I need them.

The other cool thing is I can travel with it – it’s no bigger than a MacBook power supply (in fact, it looks like the same enclosure.) I can take it with me and have my wireless network, anywhere, without having to configure a machine as a gateway. When I get home, plug it in and, voila! I’m back on the home system in no time.

It seems to be a pretty advanced router – one thing I’ve had troubles with on other routers is they can’t see other machines on the local net, unless I ferret out the (either static or DHCP-assigned) IP address and add an entry to a ‘hosts’ file on each machine (or set up DNS servers on all of the machines.) No need with this – Express’ server is smart enough to elicit the names from the machines. Happy days.

Other features are cool, too: it can run a speaker set remotely, can be used as a printer server, or a net extender. A small handful sprinkled around the house would give me access to whole bunches of things. And all as easy as (Apple) pie.

This one’s a hit.

rickb

I’ve had a DataStorm satellite dish system for quite some time now. In all, I’m pretty pleased with it (I’m posting this article from it, now), although it has had its trying moments.

The last came when my VAR (Optistreams) decided they didn’t want to be in the business, anymore. So, they dropped me. Then, I discovered my modems were old and I had to upgrade – no satellite would accept a commission on my old modems.

Well, fine. I needed an upgrade, anyway.

So, a new modem, a new VAR, and I’m talking again.

How Good Is It?

Well, it won’t replace your home land line. I find things tend to come down in bursts, and you have to get used to that. There is a built in latency that is governed by physics: The satellite is 25,000 miles out in space. A signal has to go up to the satellite, back to the ground station, and make the round trip back for any return data.

At the speed of light, that can take a quarter to a half a second. And, you can’t get past that barrier, with the physics we know, today.

Surprising, no?

Given the headache, though, it is great to be able to pop the dish up, anywhere, and have internet service. For me, it’s somewhat crucial, since I’m on the road a lot. I’ve had it as far north as Washington, and as far south as Mazatlan, and been able to put in productive work, wherever I happen to be.

Systems installed are around $4000 (mine was around $6500 – the cost of an early adopter…) You can find out more from the company: Motosat.com. Look for their DataStorm product.

rickb