The North American Eagle vehicle.
(Credit: Landspeed.com)If you haven't heard of North American Eagle, it's a program to break the existing land-based speed record of 763 miles per hour by reaching 800 mph, which is slightly faster than Mach 1 (768 mph).
There are a range of technologies incorporated into the NAE vehicle to make this crazy land speed possible, including those that provide communication between car and control center. This is where Tropos Networks comes into play.
The company announced Tuesday that its routers are being used in the latest NAE trial runs in the desert at Black Rock, Nevada, this week, where vehicle speeds exceed 500 miles per hour. Onboard the NAE vehicle during its high-speed test runs is a Tropos 4210 mobile mesh router that provides real-time communication and data monitoring.
While network connection at high speeds is not new, as Internet access on airplanes has been available for some time now, the main issue here is latency. The NAE vehicle is a very-fast-moving land-based testing object, and it's necessary that it has the capacity for true real-time communication.
To resolve this, Tropos system uses direct Wi-Fi links between the vehicle and ground stations to provide access to vehicle data with a delay of only one to three milliseconds. ... Read more
Meraki debuted the first outdoor 802.11n mesh router a few months ago, but another vendor has thrown its hat into the outdoor wireless mesh network arena.
The Tropos 7320 outdoor router.
(Credit: Tropos)Tropos Networks, another big name in wireless broadband mesh networks, joined the outdoor Wireless-N club with its latest line of 802.11n-based wireless routers. The new line includes three routers: Tropos 7320, Tropos 6320, and Tropos 6310. All three are mesh outdoor routers; however, each has its own distinctive design and features.
The Tropos 7320 outdoor mesh router is the company's flagship product and it supports 2.4GHz- and 5GHz-based clients and has flexible configuration options. The router's modular design can accommodate different types of antennas to fit a range of coverage-area types.
The Tropos 7320 can be powered traditionally with a power adapter or via Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) technology, which eliminates the need for separate power connections. It also has an optional integrated battery-backup module for use in the case of a power outage.
The Tropos 6320 is much like the Tropos 7320, minus the flexible configuration. The 6320 has a compact and lightweight design that can be mounted easily almost anywhere.
Lastly, the Tropos 6310 is an economical solution for networks with light traffic loads or for an add-in wireless solution for existing networks. The router is also compact and lightweight, but it only supports the 2.4GHz band.
These routers have 802.11n wireless, are optimized for outdoor applications, and run Tropos Mesh OS. They are fully interoperable with Tropos' existing line of fixed and mobile mesh routers, including those based on the legacy 802.11g standard.
Together with the introduction of these new routers, the company also announced its plan to immediately reduce the prices of its existing 802.11a/b/g-based routers by 29 percent.
The new 802.11n routers from Tropos are available now with prices that vary depending on the configurations, but start at $2,995. Obviously, these are not routers for your home, but rather for large organizations or operators of large wireless hot spots.
Though Wireless-N (an 802.11n draft standard that offers throughput speeds up to 300Mbps or faster) has been used in home and small-office routers for a long time, routers for outdoor hot spots are still mostly based on the 802.11g standard that caps at 54Mbps. This is primarily because the 802.11n hasn't been ratified yet.
The MR58 outdoor Wireless-N router is made for rugged environs.
(Credit: Meraki)Nonetheless, Wireless-N standard's proven superiority over 802.11g both in throughput and range means hot-spot equipment makers and providers can't ignore it any longer.
Meraki, arguably the biggest provider of outdoor Wi-Fi mesh services, on Tuesday announced its very first 802.11n device, the MR58 outdoor wireless router.
Like most previous routers from Meraki and unlike all home Wireless-N routers, the new MR58 is a weatherproof wireless device that can be mounted outside to provide wireless signals to a large open space. According to Meraki, the MR58 can withstand temperatures ranging from from -4 degrees F to 122 degrees F and provide five times the speed of standard 802.11b/g wireless devices.
Being a router for a mesh network, it can deliver high bandwidth across multiple hops, support long-distance links, and is much better for high-bandwidth content such as voice and video.
The MR58 is designed specifically to provide wireless access for large outdoor networks located on campuses, apartment complexes, hotels and resorts, and other large public spaces. It can also be used in indoor indoor areas with high-bandwidth needs such as classrooms, convention centers, stadiums, student housing complexes, and manufacturing facilities.
The new router is house in rugged casing and includes the networking features of Meraki's cloud-based hosted services, such as centralized configuration, monitoring, and security.
The Meraki MR58 is sold in packages starting at $1,499. You can upgrade it with different high-gain antennae or to get multiple units working together to create a coverage area of up 12 miles in range.
(Credit:
CNET.com)
Testing out a set of PC speakers is practically begging for an interoffice dance party, so when Lacie's USB speakers arrived at the office, we couldn't wait to bust open the box and get it started. Unfortunately, the speakers don't sound nearly as good as they look, and the high price tag is the final nail in the coffin.
French designer Neil Poulton helped Lacie design this set of PC speakers that use USB connectivity alone for both power and audio. We're typically all for a product that lets us chuck another wire out of the window, so the fact that these speakers don't need to be plugged into an outlet is very appealing. In addition, the housing is just plain sexy. The curved angles, black mesh faceplates, and smooth white surface attracted plenty of attention at the office; that is, until we tried pumping some music through the set.
Needless to say, the quality of sound just isn't up to par. They're a two-piece system so we weren't expecting room-shaking bass or mellifluous harmony, but these things barely sound better than the speakers in the average laptop. We desperately tried to find a decent sounding track, but failed, miserably. And what good are speakers if you can't use them to get down in the privacy of your own home? Even at low volume, our music (tested across several genres) sounds distant and uneven. Finally, $60 price tag adds insult to injury. These speakers simply can't do the music justice; we'd rather hear The Boss through a set of cheap, quality headphones.
Check out our full-length review for more in-depth descriptions and details.
I'm seeing a lot of interest in Microsoft's Live Mesh, a file-synchronization service and long-term vision for data-sharing across devices that the company announced at the Web 2.0 conference. It's an interesting vision, although it rehashes some basic ideas that Microsoft's been throwing around for at least seven years. (See this story from 2001: "Microsoft envisions HailStorm as a way for consumers and business customers to access their data--calendars, phone books, address lists--from any location and on any device." Substitute "Live Mesh" for "HailStorm" and it's back to the future all over again!)
But there's very little there today, as Webware's Rafe Needleman points out. I'm going to wait for more deliverables before passing judgment on whether this is really a major change in direction, or a mere feint in the direction of Web 2.0. One thing I know for sure: most of the revenue and all of the profits in Microsoft's earnings call on Thursday will be from software, not services.
One item in Rafe's hands-on review caught my interest, however. Apparently, Live Mesh will let you post certain types of music files (MP3s and, I'm guessing, non-DRM-protected WMA files) from your Mesh-connected devices to the service. Then, using a plug-in based on Microsoft's Silverlight technology, users will be able to stream these files to any device with a Web connection. Once Microsoft gets its cross-platform story ironed out (Silverlight on its way to becoming truly multiplatform; Mesh is Windows-only in this closed-beta stage but is promised for the Mac and mobile devices soon), this could become a great way to make your music collection portable--like Ezmo promised to do before the company ran out of money and shut down.
Go a little further and imagine the Zune team building links to Mesh. For instance, the PC software could transparently sync your collection to the Mesh service, then you'd be able to stream any song in your library to any device with a Web connection. Sort of a celestial jukebox for one.
(Credit:
Crave UK)
Here at Crave UK, we're celebrating the end of British summer. But not because we hate Britain's perma-cloud and incessant flooding, oh no--it's because it's back-to-school time! It's that time of year when the government forces our hoodied young to vacate the street corners, put down the cans of spray paint and actually go and learn some stuff.
And since they're all going back to school and leaving us free of harassment, why not reward them with a brand new PC that can aid their studies--or at the very least help them spread their gang videos on YouTube?
We've already covered a bunch of cheapo laptops you can get for 499 pounds and under, but arguably the best back-to-school PC we've EVER seen is the Mesh Elite Quad 6600 FX. It uses a quad-core CPU, which means it's among the fastest desktop machines on the market--and best of all it only costs 699 pounds (about $1,404). No, that's not a typo, we're not missing a digit--it really is stinking, dirt-cheap.
Here's what you get for your pennies: an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU clocked at 2.4GHz; 4GB of RAM; 250GB SATA hard drive; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT graphics card (for gaming); Microsoft Vista Home Premium edition operating system; 18x dual-layer DVD rewriter; Microsoft Works 8.5 (for all the homework stuff); and a cordless mouse and keyboard. An optional 19-inch monitor is available for an extra 100 pounds (about $201).
Remember the quad-core Sony Vaio RM1N that cost 2,500 pounds? This has the same CPU and more memory, which says an awful lot about Sony's pricing. How Mesh can afford to include all that stuff for 699 pounds is anyone's guess, but we suggest you snap one up before somebody realises their mistake.
We're going to conduct a full review with benchmark results and all the usual gubbins in the next week or so--but in the meantime, we wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying it. Do it for the kids.
(Source: Crave UK)
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