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Showing posts from January 15, 2012

Exede: The satellite broadband service you've been waiting for?

ViaSat's Exede satellite broadband service has officially launched, with an entry-level package that starts at $50 a month and promises "feels-like-fiber" performance. Buried among the gadgets, superthin screen OLED TVs, and all the other products we saw at  CES  this year was something not terribly sexy-looking, but something that will potentially affect millions of people living in rural America. It's  Exede , a new satellite broadband service from ViaSat that just launched this week. Yes, you heard right,  satellite , those contraptions that orbit the earth, and until now a very sluggish way to receive Internet service (satellite has frequently been referred to as the Internet service of "last resort"). However, thanks to the launch of  ViaSat-1 , a next-generation satellite system that was launched in October of last year, satellite-based Internet service just got a lot more attractive, with ViaSat saying it will offer up to 12Mbps downstream a

EnGenius XtraRange ESR300H router review: Short on everything

The EnGenius ESR300H High Power 300Mbps Wireless N router is supercompact, even with the 2 external antennas sticking up from its back. Speaking of a total letdown. I was very excited to get my hands on EnGenius' latest router, the  ESR300H --the first in EnGenius' new  XtraRange family --expecting to have some fun, at least with its range. There was no fun to be had at all. The ESR300H is a basic single-band wireless router with almost nothing to show for itself. If it had come out two years ago, it would have been a decent router. Now that the Wireless-N standard has fully matured, the ESR300H is far behind its time. The ESR300H is a simple single-band budget router with all ports supporting the regular 10/100 Ethernet standard. The router offers 300Mbps Wireless-N on the 2.4GHz band. It indeed showed some extra range, being able to broadcast a Wi-Fi signal farther than others of the same pricing. Effectively, however, in my testing, it should be used within

China nears 1B mobile connections as 3G popularity rises

It's no surprise that China's mobile market is highly coveted by any handset manufacturer. According to  a new report  from Wireless Intelligence,  reported by GigaOm , China is approaching the 1 billion mark for mobile connections, largely due to the popularity of 3G, which accounts for nearly 25 percent of subscribers. China's mobile connections grew almost 17 percent from 2010 to 2011. China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom are the big three cellular service providers in China, though only China Unicom currently offers Apple's  iPhone . (Credit: Screenshot by Joe Aimonetti) If anything is an indication of the popularity of mobile devices like the iPhone,  the scene at Apple's flagship store in Beijing  certainly was that. As throngs of mainland Chinese lined up for the  iPhone 4S  launch, a barrage of eggs began flying when Apple announced it would not open due to security concerns over the amount of people lined up. The Chinese g

Wikipedia shows traffic uptick during SOPA protest

Although  Wikipedia completely blacked out  its English language Web site yesterday in protest of potential U.S.  antipiracy legislation , traffic on the Web encyclopedia was higher than usual, according to research and analysis company Zscaler. (Credit: Zscaler) "If you want a quick way of increasing traffic to your website--change or take down portions of your website in protest," Zscaler wrote on its blog yesterday. "At least that is what we have gleaned from today's (1/18) Wikipedia protest against SOPA." Graphs on the Zscaler blog show that unique Wikipedia visits during the blackout were higher than surrounding days. However, Zscaler notes that these visitors were bouncing off the site fairly quickly and the majority of visits were to Wikipedia's main page and  SOPA Initiative page . Zscaler's stats break down to about a 365 percent increase in visits to Wikipedia's SOPA Initiative page and around a 77 percent increase across SOP

Intel CEO: Windows 8 tablets 'being queued up' for production

Intel CEO Paul Otellini hinted that Windows 8 tablet  production may not be that far off, while asserting that  Android  tablets won't be able to compete against the  iPad  until Ice Cream Sandwich becomes more widespread. In an earnings conference call  after the chip giant posted better than expected earnings today , Otellini said Android-based tablets don't have what it takes to compete against the iPad--yet. "Tablets are a little bit about hardware and an awful lot about software," he said. "Until you get to Ice Cream Sandwich, the offering isn't as powerful as with what's out there with Apple. As Ice Cream Sandwich tablets start shipping, you'll begin to see a little bit better receptivity...everything got a little bit better with ICS," he said, referring to Android 4.0. Then he made an interesting comment about Windows 8 tablets and production schedules. "The other part of that test [of competing with iPad] of course is t