Hasta La Gadget!

And here you were thinking the upcoming Photokina trade show was all about cameras. Not so, vaquero. Granted, LaCie’s probably taking advantage of this here event to reveal its latest and greatest media storage device, but we digress. The newly announced Wireless Space is perhaps the most interested and multifaceted device to emerge from the company in quite some time, and to say it’s taking on Apple’s Time Capsule would be understating things tremendously. In essence, what we have here is a NAS backup drive and an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi access point / router, all bundled into one delicious black box. Available in 1TB and 2TB flavors, the Space enables both Mac and PC users both to backup their files wirelessly (or via cabling, should you so choose), and it also acts as a network hard drive for accessing files remotely, a UPnP / DLNA media streamer and a full-on router should you need one. It’s fully compatible with Time Machine, and you’ll also find a trio of Ethernet sockets and a pair of USB jacks on the rear. It’s shipping today for $229.99 and $349.99, respectively, leaving Apple the loser once again in the price department. Is that a war we smell brewin’?

Continue reading LaCie Wireless Space takes on Time Capsule, doubles as NAS and WLAN router

LaCie Wireless Space takes on Time Capsule, doubles as NAS and WLAN router originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the latest Powerline adapters from Netgear, finding a strong wireless signal is as simple as plugging in to an electric outlet.

The Powerline AV 200 wireless-N extender kit hooks into an existing wireless network. When the adapter is plugged into an electric outlet, the network signal travels along the electrical wiring and rebroadcasts elsewhere in the house. Any free outlet becomes a Wi-Fi hotspot.

If you have a weak to non-existent in certain parts of the house because of walls or the router is too far away, don’t bother with a repeater to just boost your signal. Plug in the Powerline extender kit and it will piggyback your existing electrical wiring all around the house.

Netgear also announced the Powerline AV 500 family, which uses the electric outlet to extend your gigabit wired network. The adapters connect to an Ethernet port on one end, and plug into the wall on the other. Plug one adapter into a free LAN port on your network router, and the second adapter into whatever device you want to add to your network.

It’s perfect for connecting HDTVs, Blu-ray players, DVRs, PCs and game
consoles. It can also connect to
Netgear’s storage devices to set up multiple video and music streams.

The Powerline adapters won’t cover up the second outlet when plugged into the wall, and more importantly, they include a pass-through socket so you don’t lose an outlet just because it’s being used for networking.

Because the signal is transmitted on the household cooper wiring, heavy electrical use will cause interference. You may want to hold off on using a vacuum cleaner or microwave if you are working on something critical, though.

The adapters are expected in Q4 of this year. Pricing is not yet available.

The Pogoplug is a little box that lets you access your hard drive’s contents over the internet. You plug the drive into the Pogoplug, plug the Pogoplug into your router and you’re done: always-on, use-anywhere access to your files. Now, a new Wi-Fi adapter means you don’t even need to put it near your router.

The dongle costs $29 and plugs into the main unit. It lets the Pogoplug hook up to your network via 802.11 b,g or n instead of Ethernet, so you can stow both the Pogoplug and a stack of USB hard-drives in a closet and forget about them. Best of all, if you already have a Pogoplug, the company will give you a wireless adapter, free.

For accessing your data from outside the home, this should make no difference at all to speed: the limiting factor will be your home connection’s upload rate, likely a lot slower than even the slowest home Wi-Fi network. Even at home on a wireless-n network, you’ll get the best speeds unless your computer is wired direct to the router.

The Pogoplug adapter will ship in three to four weeks in the U.S. only.

Pogoplug Wireless Adapter [Pogoplug]

See Also:

• Pogoplug Update Lets You Print With an E-mail
• Cloud Engines PogoPlug
• Pogoplug Brings External Hard Drives Online

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When Australia goes to the polls on August 21st, citizens will vote for more than men and the traditional issues they represent — the ballots cast will directly impact the country’s national broadband plan. Where Australia’s ruling Labor party had pledged A$43 billion for an up-to-100Mbps fiber optic network fed directly to 90 99 percent of homes (and agreed to pay A$11 billion to Telstra) over the next seven to eight years, the opposing Liberal-National coalition says if elected, it will scrap that notion in favor of a cheaper A$6.3 billion plan. That money would create a fiber-optic backbone by 2017 but actually connects homes with hybrid fiber-coaxial connections, DSL and about A$2 billion worth of wireless, with a minimum promised speed of 12Mbps. The coalition says these services would cover 97 percent of Australians, with satellite coverage for the final 3 percent, and that those networks receiving funds from the project and connecting to the backbone would have to compete based on pricing (set by the country’s Competition and Consumer Commission) and pledge open access. Having never lived in Australia ourselves, we don’t know what’s best, but we’re pretty sure we wouldn’t be satisfied with the 12Mbps end of the Liberal-National stick.

Update: Labor plan is to bring 100Mbps to 99 percent of the population, not 90 percent as originally stated.

Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Seagate’s not content with giving users a choice of connector — the outfit’s latest GoFlex apparatus utilizes a docking system to give users an easier way to upgrade their NAS. ‘Course, those that really plan ahead will go ahead and grab a multi-bay device like Data Robotics’ Drobo FS, but for the money, it’s hard to argue with the FreeAgent GoFlex Home. Designed to work seamlessly with Windows-based PCs and Apple’s Time Machine, the 1TB and 2TB devices provide a NAS dock for the drive to sit in, and the dock itself also boasts a USB port for adding external storage to the mix or sharing a printer over the network. Seagate’s also tossing in its Share Pro service, which enables families to access content stored on the drive from mobile devices such as an iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry. Best of all, the $159.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB) asking prices won’t totally crush the bank, so it seems like you’ve just about run out of excuses for backing up those childhood memories.

Continue reading Seagate’s FreeAgent GoFlex Home adds flexibility to your next NAS setup

Seagate’s FreeAgent GoFlex Home adds flexibility to your next NAS setup originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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