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Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot

Ray Aguilera — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:32:35 -0500

The MiFi puts the Net in your pocket.

Depending on where you live and work, it can seem like the Internet is everywhere. But sadly, a good Wi-Fi signal can be lacking when you need it most--and the days of open home–Wi-Fi networks are mostly gone, as even your mom has figured out how to lock down her network. But with Verizon’s MiFi in your pocket, you can access the Internet from just about anywhere.

At 3.5- by 2.3-inches, the MiFi is about the size of a credit card. It’s less than a half-inch thick and weighs 2 ounces, so it’s easy to carry everywhere. It’s essentially a Wi-Fi access point that connects to Verizon’s 3G network, and it has a few other tricks up its sleeve. Since it’s wireless and rechargeable, it doesn’t require a physical connection to your machine and works fine from inside your bag or a pocket. When used with a single computer, the MiFi’s battery lasts about 4 hours. You can easily share your Wi-Fi with up to five other devices, though battery life will take a hit with the increased data traffic.

The MiFi puts the Internet in your pocket--as long as there's a strong 3G wireless data signal.

Using the MiFi is as simple as turning it on. The default network ID and password are on the bottom of the device, and you can edit settings via browser-based configuration pages. For road warriors, the MiFi can be tethered to your notebook computer, giving you an endless supply of Internet for as long as your laptop has power. The only drawback to this setup is that you can’t directly share your connection with additional devices while it’s tethered--although Mac users savvy enough to set up Internet Sharing can easily get around that limitation by creating their own network. Shhh--don’t tell Verizon you heard it from us.

As you can imagine, instant Internet anywhere is infinitely useful. That said, your experience will vary widely depending on how congested the 3G network around you is. Downtown San Francisco is notorious for being a miserable 3G black hole, due to the concentration of 3G devices. One recent afternoon, our download speeds varied anywhere from 134 to 786kbps. After a short hop across the bay, we were consistently getting download speeds around 1100kbps as we sat on the shore of Oakland’s Lake Merritt and finished this review in the sunshine. The volatility of Verizon’s 3G network certainly isn’t the MiFi’s fault, but it’s worth considering how and where you might use it prior to buying in.

BookEndz Docking Station

Jon Phillips — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:51:25 -0500

BookEndz Docking Station, whose ports replicate those of the MacBook Pro, keeps you fully connected and portable at the same time.

Life is tough enough. The economy’s gone to crap, Arctic glaciers are floating off the coast of California, and there’s only one more season of Lost left. All this, and we still have to mess with a wild splay of cables every time we want to enlist our MacBook into mobile service?

BookEndz aims to end the hassle of unplugging and replugging your cable connections. If you’re an office drone of the same persuasion as the Mac|Life crew, you already know the drill: Your MacBook sits on your desk, dutifully connected to a power cord, external display, speakers, printer, keyboard, and mouse. You need to take your ’Book into the conference room, so you unplug everything and scoot. The meeting ends, you return to your desk… and spend the next few minutes cursing your bad judgment to major in something self-indulgent--journalism, say--instead of cable management.

The BookEndz dock reduces your relocation chores by about 90 percent. We reviewed a model built for our 15-inch MacBook Pro. Aside from the absence of a MagSafe power port (which Apple doesn’t license to other companies), the BookEndz’s ports directly replicate all those found on the MacBook Pro. So, after plugging all your cables into the docking station, operation is a simple matter of seating your notebook into the BookEndz and then gently pushing the BookEndz’s “wings” into the computer. Voilà! The BookEndz is now one happy pass-through for all your ports and connectors, with your existing MagSafe adapter supplying the juice.

The system works exactly as advertised, but we’re a tad concerned about long-term durability. The BookEndz’s male connectors have a bit of flexibility and give--in particular, the Ethernet plug. This looseness allows the connectors to align with their respective female notebook sockets, even sockets that might be slightly off. But the looseness also strikes a bit of fear in our hearts. In fact, the bundled documentation advises, “WARNING! …You MUST dock and undock the computer 4 or 5 times to align the connectors.” And the documentation makes an even bigger deal about using your hands--not the release handle in reverse--to seat the connectors in their sockets. Add everything up, and we’re thinking this is a device that needs a gentle touch, each and every time--although we’ve been using it daily for several weeks, without any problems.

Hp MediaSmart Server EX485

Zack Stern — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:36:06 -0500

About one-quarter the size of a Mac Pro, this glossy, little box fits into any corner.

You have media files: music, movies, pictures, and video. If your Macs are networked, the MediaSmart Server effectively shares these and other files. But there’s a bizarre catch--it requires a PC for setup and ongoing administration. Still, the server includes a few Mac-centric features: Time Machine backups and direct streaming to iTunes. We just wish the Macs could take advantage of all of the server’s features; in addition to basic administration, some extras are PC-only.

The MediaSmart Server is available in a couple configurations--with one or two 750GB drives--and two or three free drive bays to add your own storage. It can also connect to external USB and eSATA drives for more space. Instead of offering a redundant RAID array, which would mirror content across drives in case one fails, the server can make duplicate copies of items across multiple disks. Unlike a RAID, it’s easy to add new drives of different sizes and selectively pick which files to duplicate.

After running the installation disc on a Windows XP (and later a Windows Vista) PC, we accessed the server’s control console. The MediaSmart hardware runs Windows Media Server, so the configuration tools require a Windows system. From those PCs, we quickly added Windows PCs to an automated backup routine, activated the media sharing functions (including the iTunes software server), added users and shared folders, and otherwise got started. The server lets up to 10 PCs gain access.

On an unlimited number of Macs, the installer adds different tools, most notably Time Machine support over the network. Our Time Machine backups ran seamlessly after the sluggish, all-night initial transfer--this is network storage, after all. We also had to be patient when recovering old files, but still prefer storing backups on the network instead of a local hard drive. We never had trouble with this setup, but be aware that Apple doesn’t officially endorse any network Time Machine backup solutions that it doesn’t sell.

The server can run 24/7, go to sleep on a schedule, or be woken remotely from Macs or PCs. So it’s always ready--or nearly ready--to send and receive backups and files. It’ll even automate its own backups over the Internet, to Amazon’s S3 storage, for example.

On Macs, you can copy songs to the server’s Music folder, and it smartly broadcasts them to iTunes as a shared device. With these tunes centrally stored, all of our computers could play music from the server. While the MediaSmart Server will store and host other media files--even letting you stream home music across the Internet, for example--none of the other media types work as simply on local Macs. Shared pictures don’t appear in iPhoto, and movies don’t show up in iTunes. However, you can manually copy or stream these files to other Macs.

And it’s easy to send media to a PS3, Xbox 360, or other device with the bundled Twonky software tool. After activation, this program runs on the server, letting other media-savvy hardware recognize and receive streams. We even downloaded a third-party utility to stream video to a TiVo.

While the Time Machine options pleased us Mac fans, too many features are PC-only. All new media files added to Windows computers can be automatically copied and organized so they’re ready for streaming. Mac users have to manually transfer media to the shared folders. And in addition to the initial setup, only PCs can add new user accounts, enable new add-ins for third-party features, and otherwise configure the server. You can access the console through Boot Camp or a virtual machine, but it’s a hassle.

Western Digital WD TV

Ray Aguilera — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:20:01 -0500

Interface issues slow down what’s an otherwise capable home media player for music, movies, and photos.

Western Digital’s WD TV is the latest attempt at solving the “last mile” problem--namely how to get your digital content from your hard drive to your television screen. There are plenty of media streamers, game consoles, and standalone set-top boxes that’ll get the job done, provided you’ve got the chops to handle getting all the right pieces playing nicely together. But WD has taken a different tack. By stripping a media player down to the bare bones, they’ve created a simple and flexible unit that makes it easy to bridge the gap between your media and your entertainment center. And--best of all--if you have high-def content, the WD TV can push out a 1080p signal.

WD TV is dead simple to use, although an inconsistent interface and limited connectivity keep it from being the magic box we’ve been hoping for. About the size of a Stephen King paperback, the WD TV is built to be portable. It connects via HDMI or composite AV cables, if you haven’t made the switch to HD yet. Beyond that, a power cord (included) is all you need. Oh, and it’s BYO storage. The WD TV doesn’t include a hard drive, but has two USB 2.0 ports to connect to disks or flash drives. Western Digital includes a handy cradle for using one of their portable My Passport drives, but as our tests bore out, any modern USB hard drive will likely work. There’s no network connectivity, so you’ll have to manually connect the drive to a computer to load media. That’s the WD TV’s strength--and its weakness. Loading media via USB is simple, but we wanted to just plunk some new movies or music onto the device via our existing network without having to plug and unplug anything.

The interface is easy to navigate with the included remote. While the WD TV will display album and movie art, our experience was hit-or-miss. The WD TV was easy to use, but we were frustrated that it did not allow us to navigate a music library using existing metadata--Album and Artist folder structures had to be created on the drive in order to drill down that way. On the plus side, the unit wasn’t terribly picky when it came to format. We were able to play .mkv videos as easily as .mp4s from our iTunes library, and music in everything from the new unprotected iTunes Plus to FLAC, unprotected WMA, AAC, and MP3 format. Of course, protected WMA and iTunes tracks and DRM’d video won’t work, but that’s hardly Western Digital’s fault.

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT for Mac

Zack Stern — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:28:00 -0600

Too bad you’ll only see those groovy stripes once.

After RAM, a video card upgrade can be the easiest way to boost performance on your Mac. We compared the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT for Mac against the Mac’s original card.

Swapping out the video card was a snap. We opened up the Mac Pro, removed the original video card, and dropped in the new one. You might need to connect a power cable, included—we just used the original cable from our prior video card. The upgrade included big fans to reduce heat, although it didn't create much noticeable noise. The GeForce 8800 GT relies on Mac OS X for its drivers.

The card can drive two DVI displays at up to 2,650 by 1,600 pixels, and uses onboard RAM--512MB--to help process graphics.

In our qualitative tests with video and imaging applications, games, and everyday use, the card seemed speedy. We ran a series of benchmarks that showed the GeForce 8800 GT proved quicker in gaming tests. Check out the results below.

Timing is Everything
Our quantitative test measure real-world results.

Buffalo Tech Linkstation Mini 500 GB

Zack Stern — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 03:24:00 -0600

With two laptop hard drives inside, the tiny LinkStation Mini fits almost anywhere.

Network-attached storage, or NAS, is one of the dullest—but most underrated—upgrades we can think of. If you’ve got a couple Macs on a network, a single drive can hold documents and stream media without having to leave one Mac on all the time. But the Buffalo LinkStation Mini marries a strong foundation (a choice of RAID 0 or RAID 1) with flirty extras (an online connection that gives access to your kick-ass Clapton collection from anywhere). Although the interface can be quite confusing, once it’s running, the LinkStation Mini adds significant value to a home network.

The NAS comes with a software utility, which essentially just pointed us to the browser-based configuration page. So after plugging the LinkStation Mini into our home network, we set it up in Firefox, as if it were a non-Apple router. The page gives access to the device’s deep features. We toggled between RAID 0, which combines the two 250GB drives for a total of 500GB, and RAID 1, which gives a total of 250GB but writes redundant information on each drive for backup. In one of the few interface highlights, an illustration helped explain the difference between the two.

Other parts of the interface caused confusion. We eventually set up a slick way to access the disk from outside our home network, even on a dynamic IP address. You log into a website provided by Buffalo, and the site contacts the drive without needing to know your home IP address. But the setup was full of ambiguity, making us think we had to register a name and password first, leading to dead ends. We picked our way through other features, such as automated backups, but beginners will likely get confused by some of the options.

Still, our Macs had no trouble finding the shared storage. We streamed music and movies directly through the connection without any problems, even to a wireless MacBook. It took about 15 minutes to transfer 1GB over the air, but with support for up to Gigabit Ethernet, wired transfers move much quicker.

Sonos Bundle 150

Zack Stern — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:04:00 -0500

She’s a brick…house. The Sonos Remote is a two-handed affair.

Instead of lugging a boom box from room to room or turning up the volume on your stereo or TV really loud, the Sonos Bundle 150 lets you blast tunes all around your house via a network. The basic complement includes hardware to play songs in two locations, with your own speakers or connection to a home stereo. Great-sounding audio streams from your local Mac, a network drive, or even through the Internet. The process works well, but even with the clean audio quality and intuitive interface, the Sonos system can’t quite justify its high cost compared to competitors.

The simplicity of setting up the Sonos system is a big part of what you’re paying for. We got our test system running in minutes, plugging the ZonePlayer 120 into a wired network and stereo. Then through a Mac utility, the system builds its own wireless network to reach the ZonePlayer 90 and wireless controller. And each Sonos box has two Ethernet ports to bridge the network to any of your unrelated wired hardware.

The Sonos Controller comes off as a brick compared to smaller, more nimble devices. While the scrollwheel interface gets music playing quickly, the device evokes the original iPod, not the sleek touch interface we’re used to on the iPhone and other media gadgets. And while the remote automatically wakes up if moved and activates backlighting in a dark room, even those tricks feel standard these days. Sonos stood out years ago with the same remote, but times—and expectations—have changed. Even after firmware updates, the device seems a bit long in the tooth—competitors have definitely caught up.

While the remote hardware is merely adequate, the music experience is still strong. We played songs through free Internet radio stations and networked Macs without any problems. Sonos even supports add-on Net-capable music services without need for a computer: Sirius, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Napster. Tapped into any of those, the player works as the infinite jukebox music junkies have been waiting for.

In our tests, audio sounded great. Users can connect components through stereo RCA ports on either box, directly to bookshelf speakers on the ZonePlayer 90, or to a digital receiver (optical or coax) on the ZonePlayer 120. We played the same song in multiple rooms or different files in different areas at the same time without problem. The ZonePlayer 120 even has RCA inputs to relay TV sounds. We listened, for example, to sports events and Meet the Press from the kitchen. The Sonos plays back nearly every file format we threw at it, although purchased tracks from iTunes are still off-limits, thanks to Apple’s refusal to cooperate with other hardware makers.

While audio streaming performed well, the Sonos bundle misses a few features. You can’t set it up wireless-only—it has to connect through Ethernet on one of the boxes. And even at this price, you only get a cord to recharge the remote; add another $40 for the charging cradle.

Apple Airport Express

Susie Ochs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:55:34 -0500

The AirPort Express makes it a breeze to set up a wireless network or extend an existing network farther—say, all the way out to the pool.

Perhaps the greatest part about the new AirPort Express is simply that Apple brought back the AirPort Express—the previous edition had all but disappeared from store shelves, and Internet message boards buzzed with worry that Apple was discontinuing it altogether. Luckily, those fears were unfounded: The new AirPort Express does everything the old model can, and it features the fastest Wi-Fi standard (802.11n) and ProxySTA, which acts as a bridge between wireless and Ethernet networks without requiring you to set up a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). Both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies are supported, and 802.11n offers transfer speeds up to 5 times faster than older 802.11g networks (we clocked downloading speeds of 4935 KB/sec, versus 1530 KB/sec with an 802.11g AirPort Express).

Setup is incredibly easy: The AirPort Utility app walks you through configuring the Express as a network router or bridge—it can share one Internet connection with up to 10 wireless clients, and AirPort Utility even lets you provide PIN-based access to guests (so you don’t have to share your network password) or limit clients’ access by time. The compact Express is less than 7 ounces, easy to tote in a laptop bag. And it can save up to five profiles, so you can create a wireless network from a wired Internet connection at home, at work, or in a hotel room without having to redo the settings.

Connect the Express to your home stereo or powered speakers with an audio cable (the 3.5mm port supports both analog stereo and optical digital audio), and you can stream music from iTunes to play over the speakers, a feature called AirTunes. This requires no software setup at all, and if you have multiple Express-equipped stereos in the house, you can stream the same music to all of them, or just some of them. The Express has a USB port, too, but only to share a USB printer with the computers on your network—you can’t connect an external hard drive and back up to it, as you can with the AirPort Extreme (4 out of 5 stars, May/07, p54).