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• IOGEAR Wireless USB Hub & Adapter (5 offers) Online shop Price Dell Home $99.99 Amazon.com $45.59 Unistorage $87.66 BestPriceTechnology.com $89.18 Directron $91.98 See more products By: Tony Celeste Searching for a way to free your laptop from a cluttered collection of peripherals, like printers, scanners, and hard drives? The IOGEAR Wireless USB Hub & Adapter Kit could be the answer. The IOGEAR USB Adapter Kit connects up to four USB devices to a wireless communication hub that then sends their signal across the room (in a 30 foot radius) at the top USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps, nearly twice the maximum speed for Wireless N. The IOGEAR USB Adapter Kit obtains its blazing speed by using Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radio technology, which operates differently from the Wireless a/b/g/n that we're accustomed to using. Instead of focusing on range, UWB focuses on speed, so much so that even wireless USB monitors work well with the IOGEAR USB Adaptor Kit. The IOGEAR USB Adapter Hub is certified by the USB-IF (USB Implementer's Forum, a non profit USB support and promotion group) to be a "Certified Wireless USB 2.0" device, which ensures its compatibility with future Certified devices as they hit the market. The hub may be shared by up to three users, and ships with a USB adapter that connects USB 2.0 to your laptop or desktop PC. And with USB's user-friendly plug-and-play setup, you should be up and running in a fraction of the time required to set up a Wireless N hub. Normally, the dongle for the wireless hub plugs into a computer, but we inserted into the hub to show all the important parts in a single photo (the compact converter plug is the only thing missing). The IOGEAR USB Hub Kit Works with peripherals like the following Printers Camcorders Scanners Personal Media Players External Hard Drives USB Enabled LCD Monitors and Projectors Flash Memory Sticks Personal Data Assistants Digital Cameras Smartphones and Cell Phones The IOGEAR USB Hub Kit does not work with Webcams Audio speakers Bluetooth The IOGEAR Wireless USB Hub & Adapter Kit is available for Windows XP and Vista, and sells for between $136.72 and $281.40. It's a real godsend for those who use USB to link up to external keyboards, mice, and such on their laptops when not on the road, or for anybody trying to reduce USB cable snarl into the back of a desktop PC.

• Beamforming: The Best WiFi You’ve Never Seen

  You should have seen my wife’s face when she found me glued to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. “No, honey, come here!” I said, my face aglow with the bikini-clad pixels of Tyra and Heidi Klum. “You’ve got to see this!” Arms crossed. Pursed lips. “Mm-hmm. Yes?” I pointed at the laptop on the counter in front of me. “Not the models. The video. It’s high-def with a 19.2 megabits per second stream rate. Looks perfect, like HDTV, right?” “Mm-hmm.” “Now turn around.” I pointed at the plasma screen on the wall pulling a different part of the same video, a second stream at 18.4 Mbps, through our Xbox 360 with an attached 802.11n bridge. “That’s almost 40 megabits streaming over WiFi. I’ve never even been able to do one stream before, and now we’ve got two!” My wife looked at the screens, looked back to me, and shrugged. “OK, then. I’ll leave you and the girls to it. Have fun.” She walked away and slammed the front door. I don’t think she actually cared if I was having fun. Strange. Clearly, she didn’t understand that something amazing had fallen into my lap. Actually, let me rephrase that. Something incredible had happened to my network. With an access point clear across the house, transmitting through one floor and three or four walls, coping with literally a dozen interfering WiFi networks surrounding the house, I was getting wireless network performance unlike anything I’d ever seen before. This was my first experience with beamforming, something I’d only seen vague mention of on long-term WiMAX roadmaps. But here it was in an 802.11n access point from a company I’d never heard of, and it blew away everything I’d ever seen a wireless product do before. Interested? Then let’s dig in. I may not have runway models to offer you, but I still think you’ll be impressed. See more products D-Link DIR-615 Wireless N Router... OfficeMax $59.99 HP Direct $69.99 LENOVO $62.00 GetPartsOnline.com $39.99 XoomDigital.com $49.94

• As the driving force behind Blu-ray technology, it’s no surprise that Sony came first to market in May 2006 with a Blu-ray equipped notebook PC. Despite the more than two years that have since elapsed, Blu-ray is really just beginning to become both affordable and viable for notebook PCs. Sony has recently reworked much of its VAIO notebook line, and introduced the multimedia AR790U/B model in mid-2008 as part of that effort. What the AR790 delivers is a well designed, nicely equipped multimedia notebook at a middling price. Sony’s successor model to this is the VGN-AR870. Configured to match the innards of our review unit, including a Blu-ray burner, this notebook goes for just over $2,900 on the SonyStyle Website (as compared to $3,300 for an identically configured AR790 at Amazon). You could buy a Blu-ray player, use Vista Home Premium instead of Ultimate and go with two 200 GB drives, and save $600 on the purchase price, to come in just under the price for the HP HDX. At 8.4 pounds (9.6 with AC adapter and power cord), the AR790 is a typical multimedia notebook in terms of size, weight and handling. Its 17" WUXGA display supports full 1080p resolution, and its 512 MB 8600M GT graphics adapter handled all of our Blu-ray and broadcast HD material with aplomb. The 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor seemed more than adequate for the computing tasks we threw at this machine, as did its 4 GB of DDR2-667 RAM. The chipset is an Intel PM965 Express, with networking support from an Intel 4965 802.11a/g/n adapter for wireless and a Marvell Yukon-based GbE for wired connections. Sony provided an ATI USB TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner along with our notebook, and we used it to good effect in tuning in OTA and unencrypted HDTV channels on the unit. The HDMI output was able to deliver both sound and picture to our digital receiver, but we couldn’t pass any high-definition audio schemes other than Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 to that device (this is typical for most PC Blu-ray playback, in fact). The keyboard layout on this unit features a more or less standard keyboard layout with full-sized keys. But the 2" margin on either side of the keyboard, with media control keys and status LEDs to the left and a power indicator to the right, didn’t leave room for a numeric keypad. For those seeking a good multimedia base station PC, this won’t be a problem. But for those who also want a fully-functional desktop replacement PC, this might be somewhat vexing. Nevertheless, the AR790 (and its nearly identical AR870 successor) makes a good media station, whether in the office or the living room. As we take a tour of this notebook, you’ll find its many ports, connectors and controls on all four of the unit’s edges. The bezel around the display is also home to a built-in 1.1 MPixel Webcam with an activity indicator light to let you know when you’re "on." Sony bundles a miniature Windows Media Center-compatible remote control with the AR790, which works with other multimedia applications besides what Vista offers. The remote control has a standard USB-attached remote sensor device (much like the Microsoft remote does itself). The MS memory card reader works with standard and Duo-sized media, MS Pro and MS Pro-HG Duo formats. MS Micro (M2) media requires an M2 standard or M2 Duo-sized adapter. The SD slot works with standard SD media or mini-SD media in a standard SD adapter. Except for the lack of a numeric keypad, the VGN-AR790 offers sufficient horsepower and capability to do double-duty as a media center and a desktop replacement. As with other multimedia notebooks, it is fairly heavy and also gets warm when running anything more than a moderate load (we measured a temperature of 103 °F/39° C on the underside with an infrared sensor during testing). The placement of USB ports (two front right and one at the rear) is a little odd, especially for right-handed users who may also want to use an external mouse. The built-in speakers are listenable but not on par with those you’ll find in the other units in this round-up. Besides these few minor annoyances, the VGN-790 is a satisfactory multimedia notebook and general-purpose PC.