Thecus Technology recently announced the N1200 combination BYOD
NAS and router.

The N1200 can accept one 2.5" or 3.5" SATA hard drive and has one eSATA and two USB 2.0 ports for capacity expansion. A "one-touch" copy button is provided for easy file back up from digital cameras or USB flash drives.

The final standard is still over a year in the future and the Wi-Fi certification process for draft 11n products is about 3-5 months away. But companies are continuing to put this Beta-test-in-progress (which you, the consumer, are paying to participate in) into end-products beyond wireless routers and adapters. We’ve already seen draft 11n integrated into notebooks, and now Apple and D-Link have integrated it into networked media players.

The AppleTV announcement revealed that draft 11n capable hardware (from Atheros, it turns out) had already been integrated into existing Core 2 Duo MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Core 2 Duo iMacs (except the 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac). All you need to do is run an “enabler” app, buy a new version of the Airport Extreme (in new Mac mini form factor) and voila, you have an interference generator for your 11b/g network. But something that Apple has done right is to put concurrent (or simultaneous) dual-band capability into its draft 11n products. This raises the cost, but also the flexibility since connections in both bands can be made at the same time.

The former-computer company—renamed from Apple Computer to just Apple today—has gone Draft N happy. Their new Airport Extreme version will have no new, special name, and support both 2.4 GHz (802.11b/g/n) and 5 GHz (802.11a/n). Computers shipped to date with Intel Core 2 Duo chips (with the exception of a single iMac model) can be … Read more

In his CES keynote, Bill Gates introduced the Microsoft Home Server, but didn’t provide many details. Thankfully, George Ou is also at CES and did a good drilldown with the Microsofties and spills some of the beans behind what makes the product tick.

The short story is that it is based on Windows Server 2003 R2 and has a “rich” admin GUI delivered to a Windows desktop and a not-so-fancy one for the riff-raff who choose to run another OS. Windows Server 2003 also powers some of Iomega’s StorCenter Pro series NASes and they ain’t cheap. And when Jim Buzbee looked at the StorCenter Pro NAS 200d/320GB with REV built-in, he found that some admin functions required dropping into Windows Remote Desktop.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has rolled out its long-expected and openly discussed WPS system for its members to choose to implement and have certified as a component of their Wi-Fi devices. With WPS, a router can provide strong WPA/WPA2 encryption keys to client devices with the push of a button or the entry of a 4- … Read more

(LAS VEGAS, NV) ASUS today announced that it is introducing a new line
of ‘Wireless for HDMI’ products, including accessory devices and embedded designs
to simplify connections between home audio and video electronic components. The
new products use Tzero ultra wideband and Analog Devices JPEG2000 technologies and are aimed at distribution of high-definition video streams around the home.