February 24, 2006
What am I Missing Here?
David Pogue's technology piece in the NYT today ("Wifi to Go") trumpets some new portable wifi routers, in the $600 range, that accept wireless access cards, putting the router on the Internet and broadcasting a wifi signal. Can't any old laptop with a card slot connected to a $30 wifi router do this same thing? I use Linux, with which it is easy as pie to make a laptop a gateway host, but couldn't a Windows laptop "share" its Internet connection with the router easily enough? I can see the advantage for a stand-alone cell-to-wifi router for a permanent situation, like at home, due to the fact the desktops don't typically have card slots and one may not want a large computer at home, but the marketing seems to focus on the portable aspect, which seems trivial to me.
Posted by johnn at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack