Let's say you have your router upstairs or just on the other side of the room and the stock WiFi antenna on your laptop can only gather the WiFi signals at half a dozen paces away. Bummer if you want to work your couch in front of the TV on the other side of the house. Or another sad scenario: your laptop doesn't have WiFi capabilities.

Fret not. Here's an adapter from Buffalo, the WLI-U2-SG54HP. It boasts of boosting reception range by 210% plus it sticks to the back of your monitor. Additional specs: Vista compatible, Wi-Fi b/g, WEP 64/128bits, WPA-PSK and IPv6.

It retails at around US$ 31 and would be available sometime next month. We all know that this can also be used for less than legal purposes but don't get any ideas.

Even though most of our are gadget freaks, we generally don't fall for all the hyped-up stuff. Most of the times, the manufacturers advertise their gadgets as being the next best thing after sliced bread. But once you buy the thing, you realise how "good" it really is. Sure, there might be a few great gadgets, but generally, you never get everything that's advertised.

But there's this thing which had us hooked onto it. Calling it a router would be like calling a computer a calculator. Known as the Asus WL-700gE, this 'router' can not only help you out as a connectivity device, but it does a lot more. A lot!

For starters, I'll list the features first:

• 160GB Built internal 3.5" Hard Drive
• 5 Ethernet ports
  
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• Web Server / FTP Server
• Photo Album/Message Board Wizard
• Automatic bandwidth management (downloading + web browsing)
• Plug ‘n Share USB Storage
• Possibility to do a RAID setup
• iTunes Server + UpnP AV Server
• Encrypts in 64/128 bit WEP, WPA/WPA2 supports TKIP, AES, WPA, WPA2 and MAC. (phew...)

I guess I have your attention by now. Well, apart from all of that, it also does Bittorrent downloads! Yeah, so you don't need to keep your PC on the whole time; the router can do all the downloading overnight. Although the built-in client is a bit buggy, I guess it would be cleaned within a few firmware updates. The price is a bit on the steeper side. Newegg sells it for about $260.

Now anyone who refuses all of this is just flat out lying! Well, we don't know about you guys, but given the chance and the cash, we'd kill for this router! So if you really need someone dead, we're ready to do the dirty-work.

With PDA's on the decline, more and more people are turning to phones to keep up with their mobile computing needs. Whether you choose Symbian, Palm, Windows CE or Windows 5.0, compatibility issues are almost certain to arise.

Unfortunately, the issues effecting Windows 5.0 devices can affect more than just the user, and in some cases they can bring down an entire network. In short the problem amounts to this: A Centrino equipped laptop connecting to a WPA-PSK encrypted network is used to sync a device running Windows 5.0 via USB and voila the network goes down!

I don't mean a few lost packets or temporary drop in throughput, I mean the network will remain unusable until such time as WPA-PSK encryption is turned off altogether or WEP encryption is opted for instead. While many home users might think "so what," many small and medium sized businesses are becoming concerned.

Considering how useless WEP encryption is for a business (or anyone else for that matter) the solution of turning off WPA or opting for WEP is not really an option. For businesses that don't have the money to pay for dedicated, competent IT staff this can really foul things up!

This problem is present on "newish" phones that run Windows 5.0 including the HTC Strtrc and the O2XDA mini. I had not heard of this problem before, so if anyone has ever experienced this problem leave a comment or find a spot in our forums to discuss it so we can determine how widespread it is.