Inside CNET Labs Podcast

The original SheevaPlug computer

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Six months ago, I had an exclusive First Look at Marvell's prototype plug-in computer, the SheevaPlug. Ever since, dozens of companies have contacted me about their applications. Most recently, CNET reviewed the Pogoplug from Cloud Engines.

That said, it didn't surprise me when Marvell announced Tuesday that 10,000 SheevaPlug units featuring Marvell CPU technology have shipped.

To celebrate this milestone, Marvell also announced Tuesday the launch of its worldwide Plug Computer developer competition, called "Free Your Imagination," to award the most innovative Plug Computing concept submitted.

You can participate or find out more about this competition at plugcomputer.org. This Web site is also the main Web resource for the plug application development community, where members can access software that facilitates the development of the SheevaPlug. Developers can also exchange ideas for free.

While the applications differ from one vendor to another, in a nutshell, Marvell's Plug Computer is a tiny unit, about the size of a small wall-plug power adapter. The little computer, despite its physical size, is equipped with Marvell's 1GHz processor and some 256MB of RAM. The computer also comes with a USB port and an Ethernet port to be best used as a network storage or an Internet-based cloud storage server.

One of the biggest selling points of the Plug Computer is the fact that it uses very little energy and therefore is the cheapest solution to offer users high-performance, always-on, always-connected, and environmentally friendly computing.

(Credit: CNET)

Apple "announced" upgrades to both their Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station in October. After much ado, attempting to get the new revisions and the old ones in-house to test, we've finally completed testing and have updated the reviews.

The thing about network testing is that because so many factors can potentially affect wireless network traffic, results can be quite unpredictable. This is especially true in an office environment like CNET's San Francisco office, where everyone and their mother seems to own an iPhone or BlackBerry.

While we attempt to minimize interference by analyzing the spectrum and choosing the best wireless band, we can't stop random devices using the band and cluttering the network. The mothers are usually the worst offenders.

So we test in an environment that, while not 100 percent clean, is 100 percent real-world. Check out the review updates for the Apple Time Capsule and Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, to see how these two fared in a real environment.

If you've wished you could connect your external hard drive to your computer without having to use the USB cable, now you can.

Imation announced Thursday the availability of the first wireless USB external hard drive, the Pro WX. The hard drive works just like any other USB hard drive, with one exception: it doesn't require a USB cable.

The Pro WX wireless USB external hard drive.

(Credit: Imation)

Wireless USB has been under development for about five years, and some of the first products were demoed at CES 2009. This technology allows you to connect USB 2.0 devices to a computer wirelessly from up to 30 feet away with a throughput speed of up to 480Mbps.

According to Imation, the Pro WX wireless USB external hard drive offers less than that, with speeds of up to only 120Mbps or 15MBps; this is about three times slower than regular USB 2.0 hard drives. At this speed it can finish copying the entire content of a CD-ROM (roughly 800MB) in about 50 seconds. Other than that, this drive is based on the 3.5-inch desktop hard drive and offers 1.5TB of storage.

The Imation Pro WX features a sleep-mode feature to conserve energy and a one-touch, backup sync button for you to manually start a backup when needed. The device is compatible with both PC and Mac operating systems

In order to take advantage of the wireless USB, your computer needs to support this. As most computers don't have built-in wireless USB, there are adapters that you can add to the machine. It's unclear if an adapter is included with the Pro WX.

What's clear, however, is the fact that this is going to be one of the most expensive external hard drives you can find. At the estimated price of $500, about three times the price of regular external USB hard drives of the same storage capacity, I am not sure if it's worth it when the only benefit is losing the USB cable.

The new labels for different versions of HDMI cables.

(Credit: HDMI Licensing)

If you've caught yourself scratching your head trying to figure out what type of HDMI cable to buy, you're probably not alone. With so many versions, it's hard to know which does what. However, very soon, you won't have that trouble anymore.

In an effort to make it easier for customers to identify the right products for their needs, HDMI Licensing released Thursday, on behalf of the HDMI Founders, an updated version of the HDMI Adopted Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines. HDMI Licensing is the agent responsible for licensing the high-definition multimedia interface specification.

The most notable changes in the guidelines are significant restrictions on the use of version numbers and new marketing requirements for cables. These new requirements are designed to simplify the product selection process for consumers, enabling them to purchase an appropriate product based on features, instead of having to do research on what each version does.

According to the new guidelines, adopters will no longer be allowed to use HDMI specification version numbers in the labeling, packaging, or promotion of their HDMI-compliant products. These restrictions go into effect immediately for cable products. Noncable products, however, have until January 1, 2012, to fully comply.

The new guidelines designate all HDMI cable products into five types:

Windows Home Server soon gets supercharged to better support Windows 7.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Microsoft announced Thursday its latest update to the Windows Home Server, the Power Pack 3. Originally, this upgrade was planned to be rolled out prior to the launch of Windows 7, but it was delayed due to a problem found during testing.

Power Pack 3 is much like a service pack to Windows Home Server, which is a special version of the Windows operating system designed specially for network-attached storage devices, such as the HP MediaSmart servers.

Judging from a few Windows Home Server-based NAS servers we've reviewed, Windows Home Server significantly helps new consumers familiarize themselves with network-attached storage devices by providing a similar management console, features, and file system support to those of the Windows operating system for desktop computers.

According to Windows Home Server Team's blog, the Power Pack 3 will be available next Tuesday in all shipping languages (including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish). The pack will be free and can be downloaded via Windows Update.

If you plan to manually download it, the Power Pack 3 requires Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed. However, if your NAS server is connected to the Internet, Power Pack 3 will be automatically installed as part of automatic updates. Make sure you turn this feature on.

The major improvement the Power Pack 3 delivers is support for Windows 7, especially in the realms of backing up and media playback. The breakdown:

• Windows 7 Libraries integration: Now users can access Windows Home Server shared folder from within Windows 7 libraries.
• Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression: Windows 7 Action Center now recognizes Windows Home Server as a legitimate backup solution and stops warning you that a backup has not been set up.
• Windows 7 power settings: Windows Home Server can wake a Windows 7-based computer to do a backup, then put it back to sleep once the backup is done.
• Windows Search: Power Pack 3 includes Windows Search 4, which improves query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.
• TV archive: Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This is actually a very handy feature if you want to play back recorded TV shows to multiple devices, including portable ones.

For the complete details of what you can get from the Power Pack 3, check out the release documentation. It seems if you move to Windows 7, the Power Pack 3 upgrade is a must for your Windows Home Server-based NAS servers.

It's fair to say that so far Synology is the NAS maker with the fewest misses. Ever since the company joined the network storage arena in early 2008, it has earned three CNET Editors' Choice awards, with the newest one being the DS409Slim.

The new DS410j NAS server from Synology supports Time Machine.

(Credit: Synology)

Synology NAS servers offer a vast number of features; signature among those are the advanced surveillance system, sophisticated photo sharing/managing capability, and a robust user interface. And now Synolgoy has overcome one of its only former missteps: by adding support for Apple's Time Machine.

The company announced Wednesday the launch of its new four-bay NAS server, the DS410j. This new NAS server carries all the features of other Synolgoy NAS servers and, on top of that, support for Apple's popular backup solution. For the first time ever, Mac users can use Time Machine (available in Mac OS 10.5 and later) with a Synology NAS server. Currently, very few NAS servers on the market support this feature.

Beyond that update, according to Synology, the DS410j is designed for busy home networks and entry-level businesses. It can house four 3.5-inch SATA hard drives of up to 2TB each, making the total storage up to 8TB. Like other models, the DS410j supports multiple RAID configurations when used with two or more hard drives. It also comes with automated backup, remote file sharing, and multimedia streaming features and is fully DNLA-compliant.

The DS410j is available now both with and without hard drives. Its price varies depending on the configuration; however, like other Synogloy NAS servers, it will not be cheap. It seems that affordability is something that Synolgoy will continue to miss for a while.

You've probably heard of or even owned a computer that automatically turns off its hard drive when it senses shock or heavy vibrations. That is an example of sensitive human-machine intimacy. Another example I like is tilting the iPhone to use it as the driving bar for my racing games. Well, that nifty human-to-computer interaction is about to go to whole new level.

HP announced Thursday a new inertial-sensing technology that enables the development of digital micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers that are up to 1,000 times more sensitive than those in high-volume products currently available.

A MEMS accelerometer is a sensor that can be used to measure vibration, shock, or change in velocity. When implemented, this allows the device to "feel" the environment it is in.

According to HP, the new sensing technology--the result of HP's 25 years of nano-sensing research--includes multiple detectors as part of a complete sensor network and therefore is capable of real-time data collection, management evaluation, and analysis. This information enables users to make better, faster decisions, and take subsequent action to improve safety, security, and sustainability.

Your mobile devices' wireless LAN is about to get significantly better.

Atheros, a mobile Wireless LAN (WLAN) chip maker, announced Monday the lauch of its newest and possibly the industry's highest performance mobile WLAN chip, the the ROCm single-chip 11n AR6003 family.

The new AR6003 mobile WLAN chip is the smallest WLAN currently on the market.

(Credit: Atheros)

According to Atheros, this tiny new chip, currently the smallest WLAN chip on the market, measuring just a 5mm by 5mm, combines both the energy efficiency of Atheros' ROCm technology and the faster 802.11n WLAN performance. As a result, it offers up to 85Mbps of actual throughput speed in the 5GHz band and 48Mbps in the 2.4Ghz band.

While this speed is slower than the 150Mbps ceiling speed of the single-stream 802.11n standard (which is just half the speed of regular dual-stream, 802.11n standard used in desktop and laptop computers), it's a very good fit and offers a major performance improvement for smartphones, mobile gaming devices, and other portable consumer electronics products.

The most impressive feature of the new chip, however, is its energy efficiency. According to Atheros, the AR6003 require about 20 percent less energy than the previous model, the AR6002, which prior to the launch of the AR6003, had always been the most energy efficient WLAN chip on the market.

In addition, the new AR6003 chip supports Atheros Universal Wireless Cooperation, which is a suite of advanced mobile wireless coexistence techniques. This helps significantly enhance the simultaneous operation of WLAN and Bluetooth in mobile devices. The new chip also support mobile device with host wakeup, and Wi-Fi Protected Setup, a feature that allows for quickly connecting a client to a wireless network without having to amnaully enter the encryption key.

The AR6003 mobile WLAN chip is available in single-band and dual-band (2.4/5Ghz) configurations. You won't be able to buy one on your own, but very soon you'll find one in your mobile wireless device.

"I'll give you two guesses as to this product's identity. Is it the Base Station or Time Capsule? Only the astute among you will know for sure.

(Credit: Apple)

Along with the major Apple announcements that took place Tuesday, Apple also--quite stealthily, I might add--announced upgraded performance, specs, and support for both its Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station.

Time Capsule received the most updates, with Apple claiming that with the new technologies and refinements added to both Time Capsule and the Time Machine software, backing up using Snow Leopard is up to "60 percent faster than before."

That number is based on internal testing done by Apple comparing a new preproduction (unreleased) Time Capsule with the version released earlier this year.

Apple also claims that by using the latest 802.11n wireless technology, you'll see "up to five times the Wi-Fi performance and up to twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks."

This, also based on Apple testing comparing both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme Base Station to "Apple's 802.11g products." The company doesn't specify which products it compares them to, however.

Finally, Apple claims that improvements to both Time Capsule's and the Airport Extreme Base Station's antenna design can give "up to 50 percent better performance and up to 25 percent better range than with the previous-generation Time Capsule and Airport Extreme base Station."

This performance is based on Apple testing comparing the Time Capsule and Airport based Station to "Apple's 802.11n products." Again, although we can safely assume they're basing the comparison on apples to apples test results on the previous versions of the versions of the same hardware, we can't be certain.

We'll of course be conducting our own testing as soon as we get these updated versions of the products in for review. It'll be interesting to see how close our performance numbers match up with theirs.

According to Apple's site, both new versions of the hardware are shipping now.