You may or may not be aware that we were away for two weeks of relaxation in early January to the island of Maui. Maui continues to be our favorite place to go and unwind and we are still looking at ways of expanding Sysguy to the Valley Island! If you have never been there, I highly recommend a minimum 10 day visit, as anything else is too short! Whales and Dolphins were jumping and the whole family had a great times and there were some tears as we boarded our Westjet flight to return home! If you are interested in more of the trip, I will soon be posting more on my personal blog (the link is on this page)Â in the very near future as well as pictures on my photo gallery.
While I didn’t do a lot of “work” while I was away, I had the opportunity to have an extended test of some peripherals that I use on a regular basis to see how they worked out.
The first was my Linksys Wireless GÂ Travel Router. This device is slightly bigger than a deck of cards, comes in it’s own case and has in internal AC adaptor. This little dvice is always in my bag and really has come in handy. It allows me to do a couple of things. The router works as most home routers do offering firewall and shared wireless access, but this router does a couple of things that other travel routers do not.
Firstly, the AC adaptor for the unit is built right into it. There is a little slide on the top of the device to side out the two prongs and plug the router into a wall outlet or extension cord. This makes it a little lighter and less bulky to travel with.
Another feature that I find is a bonus with this router is that there is 2 RJ45 ports on it. One for a hardwired Cable or DSL modem connection the other for laptops or even desktops and other devices. Most travel routers have one port that you can either plug into a cable modem and use the device as a router, or plug into your hardwired ethernet card on a machine and use it as a wireless client but you can’t do both. With the Linksys one port can be plugged into a cable router and the other can be used for a other devices. For example I used my Linksys Vonage phone adaptor on this port (but more about this later).
Something else I have used from time to time is the routers ability to connect to a wireless network (unsecured only) as it’s primary ethernet (internet) connection. I have used this often in hotels to connect to their wireless internet services and then boost that signal into my room or unit. Another scenario where this can come in handy is if you have a group of people working together, they can connect to a secured wireless network (your own from the Linksys) and share data back and forth and yet still have Internet access on theier own PC’s . This gives you an additional firewall between the PC’s and the hotel or providors Internet Connection.