FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

I just installed one of the new line of wireless 'N' routers (802.11n draft resolution), the Belkin Vision N1. The computer industry is, for the most part, not quite as psychotically frenetic with their product introductions as the consumer electronics industry, so this went fairly smoothly. No HDMI teeth mashing, no video muting, no loud buzz when you switch to DTS.

Truth be told, if my old wireless router, an ancient 802.11g model (okay, "ancient" is a relative term – in this case it means almost two years old) was still working, I'd have kept it longer. Change is stressful.

Technically, the old wireless router was still working, provided you sat within 10' of it. That's quite a bit short of the 50+ feet it provided when new. One brown-out or power surge too many I guess. The kids adapted. They used to huddle in the corner of the room directly above my home theater because they could get a connection there (and a fairly decent massage from the subwoofer). Quality time I would have thought, until the oldest, an almost-lawyer, threatened legal action.

Besides, I wanted to try some new things that are more-or-less related to home theater in general, and iPods in particular. I have two identical 250 GB external USB hard drives that I can daisy chain together, and I keep my photos and music on those. But I hate cables, so I'd like to put them in corner somewhere, away from spilt drinks and prying fingers, but still connect to them. Enter the Belkin wireless USB hub.

I don't have it yet, but if it works as I think it will, I'll be able to load music wirelessly. But that's not all. If you're a geek, the Vision N1 has some cool features too, like the ability to act as an access point or a router. Though truth be told (again), CNET didn't think it was the fastest of the N routers, in fact, it scored near the bottom (but tons faster than "G"). Still, I'm getting farther (200' to the house next door) and faster (as fast as the cable company can pump out the data) than I ever did before. Of course, you have to have a special "N" USB adaptor to get "N" speed, but I'm showing a 130 Mbps connection (though that's not throughput - that tops out at about 4 Mbps with my cable.)

So I'm happy for now.

I'll have more to report when the wireless USB hub arrives and I figure out how my music collection can get even easier to use.