In many of our lives, broadband Internet access has become a necessity. But is access to the Web a public resource, such as water, gas, phone and electricity, something that should be readily available at a low cost to everyone? The city of Philadelphia certainly thinks so. Its Wireless Philadelphia project is a non-profit organization that’s collaborating with EarthLink to bring Wi-Fi coverage to certain public areas of the city and low cost and subsidized access to residents. Many citizens will get modest bandwidth for as low as $21.95 per month under the plan, while lower-income families could pay less than half that rate. But Philadelphia isn’t the only city looking to bring Wi-Fi to all of its residents; San Francisco, too, intends to offer free city wide access that Google and EarthLink will fund via ad support.

Although free Wi-Fi sounds like a bargain for users, for years now both the Philly and San Francisco projects have been planned but haven’t actually been deployed because of ongoing controversies regarding the philosophy, technology, and business models surrounding municipal Wi-Fi. For years in Pennsylvania telcos such as Verizon aggressively opposed government involvement in wireless Internet projects, arguing that it represented unfair government competition with private ISPs. Ultimately, Wireless Philadelphia won approval, but only after the model evolved into a fee-based service in partnership with a private ISP. The San Francisco plan remains controversial across a range of political groups. Many question whether Google’s targeted advertising will violate user privacy. Others oppose giving Google/EarthLink a veritable monopoly on municipal wireless services that they might be able to spin off into other businesses. Putting a city wireless plan into the hotbed of local politics and competing interests seems to have delayed some of the largest projects, which were first proposed years ago. San Franciscans continue to debate the merits of the Google/EarthLink proposal and Wireless Philadelphia is only now wrapping up “functionality tests” in a small “proof of concept” area of the city. If the muni Wi-Fi projects are way behind schedule, the technology provider for both of them, EarthLink, is not admitting to delays; “the contracts and deployment proceed on schedules we anticipated,” says Cole Reinwand, VP of product strategy and marketing at EarthLink.

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Logitech VX Revolution 931690-0403 Ultimate notebook mouse: 931690-0403 (USB, Retail)

Although the VX Revolution isn’t the smallest notebook mouse on the block, it’s one of best. The mouse’s scroll wheel tilts left and right and even has a switch that lets you choose between a fast, smooth scroll and the traditional precision scroll. The mouse also boasts a zoom in/out switch and a one-Touch search button. Once you highlight a word and press the search button, your favorite search engine opens and uses the highlighted word as a search term.

As with Logitech VX Revolution, the Logitech mouse stores its USB wireless receiver inside the body of the mouse. The mouse turns on when you remove the receiver and then powers back off as soon as you pop the receiver back into the mouse.

Features:
The ultimate notebook mouse. Rev-up your notebook with the new VX Revolution. Logitech´s innovative MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel lets you fly through long documents at hyperspeed, or switch to precise click-to-click scrolling to navigate lists, slides, and image collections. Search the Web by highlighting a word or phrase and pressing the Search button. Effortlessly zoom in and out of photos, spreadsheets, and documents with the convenient zoom slider. New, revolutionary, hyper-fast scroll wheel A new concept in PC navigation, the MicroGear™ Precision Scroll Wheel operates in two distinct modes, allowing you to scroll faster and with more precision than ever before: Free-spin mode for hyper-fast, nearly frictionless scrolling. With a single flick, the machined alloy wheel spins for up to seven seconds, scrolling hundreds of pages or thousands of rows. Fly through long documents, and instantly stop wherever you want. Click-to-click mode for detailed navigation. An ultra-precise ratchet-scrolling mechanism allows users to move line-by-line through complex spreadsheets, step through slideshows, or travel small vertical distances in documents or Web pages. Hyper-fast scrolling Fly through long documents at hyperspeed. Shift to precise click-to-click scrolling to navigate lists, slides, and image collections. One-Touch search Highlight a word or phrase and press the search button to instantly display results from your favorite search engine. High-resolution zoom Effortlessly zoom in and out of photos, spreadsheets, and documents. Performance laser Experience pinpoint accuracy with advanced laser tracking and ultra-smooth gliding feet. Storable micro-receiver Compact and portable, with robust 2.4 GHz digital cordless technology for superior wireless performance. Ergonomic design Enjoy exceptional comfort with a sculpted, right-hand shape and soft-touch rubber grips.

Product Specification:
System Requirements PC Windows® XP Windows Vista™ (requires Internet connection)
Available USB port CD-ROM drive Mac Mac® OSX 10.2.8+ Available USB port CD-ROM drive Internet connection

Remember those heady days in the early aughts when Bluetooth seemed poised to change networking for everyone, everywhere? Although Bluetooth didn’t enjoy the instantaneous leap to stardom some of us expected, it’s still around and connecting tech-savvy travelers to their gear. If your trips take you to the office or home printer from time to time, you’ll like this wireless USB printer adapter. The Bluetooth 1.1 device supports Win98/Me/2000/XP computers, as well as any mobile PDA types running Palm OS or Microsoft Pocket PC 2002/2003. The printer adapter includes its own power cord and a utility CD but lacks the USB cable you’ll need to connect it to your printer.

Everyone like mini-mice because we can use them with ease in cramped quarters such as coach class on an airplane. Although we’re not adverse to corded notebook mice, we’re always looking to reduce clutter when we travel, so it’s no surprise that we’re fans of Microsoft’s wireless notebook mouse. The device is much smaller and lighter than your average desktop mouse and has a compartment for the USB wireless receiver (when it’s not in use). The 6000’s accurate and handles fast movements, thanks to a 1,000dpi resolution and support for up to 6,000fps. Our favorite feature: the Magnifier toggle button, which lets you zoom in on any portion of the screen.

Features:
Revolutionary Ergonomic Design Instant Viewer 4-Way Scrolling Magnifier Battery Life Indicator

Product Specification: Interface USB Tracking Technology Mouse Tracking
System: Microsoft-proprietary laser technology
Imaging Rate: Dynamically adaptable to 6000 frames per second X-Y Resolution: 1000 points per inch (39.38 points per millimeter)
Tracking Speed: Upto 15 inches (381 millimeters) per second Wireless Technology
Wireless Platform: 27MHz Radio Frequency (RF)
Wireless Channels: 27.045MHz channel 0, 27.145MHz channel 1
Wireless Ids: Over 65,000 random identification codes Wireless Range: 6 feet (1.83 meters) typical.
Note: RF range is affected by many factors, such as nearby metallic objects and relative positioning of the keyboard, mouse, and receiver

System Requirements
Operating System: Windows XP Pro/Home/Media Center Edition/Tablet PC Edition/Windows 2000,
233MHz Processor or higher, 128MB RAM or higher
Hard Disk Space: 45MB free (Install 100MB)
Connectivity: USB port
Other: CD drive; 2x AA alkaline batteries required Battery Life 6 months typical
Dimensions (WxLxH): Mouse: 3.25 x 4.12 x 2.52 inch / 82.5 x 105 x 64.1 mm
Receiver: 2.78 x 4.4 x 1.32 inch / 70.5 x 112 x 33.6 mm
Warranty 1 year manufacturer

I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router so that my brother and I could share one Internet connection in our apartment. As soon as I plugged the router in, it worked fine with my cable modem service and everything was OK for a few weeks. But we recently went on a vacation, and when we got back, neither of us could wirelessly connect to the network. We’re both getting a WEP error. I know WEP is a security thing, but I don’t remember ever setting it up. If we connect our laptops to the router with an Ethernet cable, we can access the Web, but we can’t sync up on the wireless connection anymore. What’s going on?

It sounds like you left your router setup with its default out-of-the-box configuration and someone took control of your network and enabled WEP while you were away. You may be a victim of a wardriver. Wardrivers / wardriving is a term used to describe people who drive around looking for unprotected wireless networks. In your email you mention you live in an apartment, so it’s possible someone in your building found your network by searching for an available network connection. If you left your router in its default configuration while you were on vacation, the wardriver could then log into your router, enable WEP, and keep your wireless connection all to himself. We know this sounds a little nuts, but it happens all the time. However, it’s not always malicious because some folks will do this to inform less savvy users that their networks are unprotected and they need to secure them.

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I wanted to check out the Netgear RangeMax Wireless Router because it has the single most unusual feature of any of the MIMO routers I looked at no antennas. At least, the RangeMax doesn’t have any external antennas. All the antennas are packed away neatly inside the router’s case. The Netgear case is a white box with a ring of blue LED lights on top that flash in a circle when the router is in use.

The setup for the RangeMax was the second smoothest of any of these routers, ranking just after the Buffalo router. The setup wizard is extremely well-designed, as it used separate instruction trees for replacing a router and for installing a new router.

Netgear products incorporate outstanding user interfaces. The RangeMax router has an excellent admin interface, while the client utility for the notebook adapter was my favorite by a considerable margin. Not only was the utility’s user interface attractive, but the profile manager is excellent, as are the included status utilities.

The Netgear router’s test results were eye-opening. Although it trailed the Linksys draft-n router in all respects, it finished ahead of the D-Link router in the stressful second test. The gaps were reasonably small in all of the tests, so the RangeMax clearly is the performance value champion of my testing, as the full investment would be about $200 compared to $300 or so for the draft-n routers.

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Housed in an attractive white case, the D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router offers numerous features and substantial performance benefits over my 802.11g control router. The design of the D-Link router is sharp but somewhat unassuming. I liked the setup routine for the most part. The setup was probably the most elegant and inviting that I saw, and I liked that it asked me if I was upgrading as opposed to installing into an environment where there had not previously been a router. However, the router lost points when the setup process stalled when the wizard could not recognize the router strange, as the setup CD came in the same box with that router. In any case, because I had advanced most of the way through the setup, I went directly into the administrative user interface and completed the setup fairly easily.

Using the administrative UI is probably the best way to go anyway, because the UI is not only very sharplooking but also the fastest that I’ve seen. I liked the client utility, as well.

The D-Link scored decent performance results, finishing behind the Linksys but far ahead of the control router and outperforming the MIMO routers in general. Its performance compared to the Netgear router was a little closer than I expected, but this was not a totally surprising result. Like the Linksys router, the Xtreme N Gigabit Router offers Gigabit Ethernet connections as well as a USB port.

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