Honey, I shrunk the Wireless-N USB adapter
UPDATED: Corrected the spelling of "GW-USMicroN".
Most laptops these days come with built-in Wi-Fi or even Wireless-N capability. However, if you have an old laptop or a game console that you want to hook to the Internet wirelessly, I've got some good news...and it's tiny.
The GW-USMicroN next its D-Link counterpart.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)I just got my hands on the GW-USMicroN, Planex's latest USB Wireless-N adapter that the company announced at the end of last month. I've seen a lot of USB wireless adapters and I am generally not impressed with them.
The GW-USMicroN, however, is very different: it's tiny--just about a sixth of the D-Link DWA160, which is already rather compact among USB Wireless-N adapters.
Despite the small form factor, the GW-USMicroN supports Wireless-N with MIMO technology and is backward-compatible with Wireless-G. It supports all encryption standards and Wi-Fi Protected Setup, which allows you to quickly hook a wireless device to a network without having to enter the hard-to-remember encryption key.
I tried it out with our test laptop and got a good signal from it with about the same range and throughput speed as other regular-size Wireless-N adapters.
The GW-USMicroN has one more thing that makes it different from most USB Wi-Fi adapters: it's compatible with Xlink Kai. This means it works with games consoles such as the PSP, PS3, Nintendo Wii, and other Xlink Kai-compliant devices.
The GW-USMicroN will be available in the U.S. sometime next month and will cost around $30.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong.
