Dealing with hot spots

Welcome to another year of Gearhead! As we start planning a strategy to shed our newly acquired padding we have a couple of neat products that arrived just before Christmas that you might find useful in the coming year should you look for or find yourself in a hot spot.

First, we have the WiFi Seeker from Chrysalis Development. This 2.25-by-1.2-by-0.43-inch key-chain device detects 802.11b and 802.11g signals at distances up to 300 feet. Press the button on the device and the four LEDs on the front will flash for about a half-second if there is a Wi-Fi source within range. It then will display between one and four lights, depending on the signal strength.

Inside the case there is a tiny and fairly directional dipole antenna that makes the WiFi Seeker a useful access point locator. The WiFi Seeker is the best gadget we've come across for finding Wi-Fi hot spots and yours for around $25.

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Welcome to another year of Gearhead! As we start planning a strategy to shed our newly acquired padding we have a couple of neat products that arrived just before Christmas that you might find useful in the coming year should you look for or find yourself in a hot spot.

First, we have the WiFi Seeker from Chrysalis Development. This 2.25-by-1.2-by-0.43-inch key-chain device detects 802.11b and 802.11g signals at distances up to 300 feet. Press the button on the device and the four LEDs on the front will flash for about a half-second if there is a Wi-Fi source within range. It then will display between one and four lights, depending on the signal strength.

Inside the case there is a tiny and fairly directional dipole antenna that makes the WiFi Seeker a useful access point locator. The WiFi Seeker is the best gadget we've come across for finding Wi-Fi hot spots and yours for around $25.

Our second product addresses a different hot spot issue that will be crucial to all male users of laptops who: a) actually use their laptops on their laps, and b) plan to sire children. The problem with many laptops is that when used on your lap, you might find you have a personal hot spot - in fact, some laptops get uncomfortably hot. Hence the second problem.

Now we are sure you are avid readers of the prestigious U.K. journal Human Reproduction. Thus, you must have seen in a recent issue the results of a study titled "Increase in Scrotal Temperature in Laptop Computer Users," by Dr. Yefim Sheynkin of the State University of New York at Stonybrook.

The study involved a group of 29 men between the ages of 21 and 35. Sheynkin and his colleagues measured subjects', er, private temperature both with and without laptops in a room where the temperature was "about 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit." We would have preferred the temperature measured to at least two decimal places.

Apparently, when the gentlemen held their thighs together to balance a laptop that was not switched on, their lap temperatures rose by about 3 degrees. The scientists then switched on the laptops, allowed the machines to warm up for 15 minutes and placed them on the subjects' laps. The gentlemens' temperatures rose by just more than 1 degree in 15 minutes.

Sheynkin said that because the body needs to maintain a proper testicular temperature for normal functioning, "portable computers in a laptop position produce scrotal hyperthermia by both the direct heating effect of the computer and the sitting position necessary to balance the computer." Do we need to point out that scrotal hyperthermia in men leads to decreased fertility? No, we do not.

After one hour of use, the surface temperature of the laptops rose from around 88 degrees to nearly 104 degrees, and for the gentlemen the temperature rise was on average 4 degrees on the left of the scrotum and 5 degrees on the right. Who could have guessed?

So all you laptop-using chaps planning to start families must be starting to wonder, "what can I do?" Simple, buy a $30 Laptop Desk from LapWorks.

The Laptop Desks will not only reduce the risk of scrotal hyperthermia as proved by a thermal study conducted by the California Polytechnic University at Pomona (see details), they will also allow you to sit in a better posture.

When not defending your lap, the Laptop Desks can be folded into a wedge shape that places the laptop's keyboard at a more ergonomic typing angle and improves non-lap-based cooling.

We tried the Laptop Desk Version 2.0 and the new Laptop Desk UltraLite that is thinner, lighter and designed specifically for road warriors using notebooks of 5 pounds or less. In both cases, our posture was much better and we were, shall we say, personally much cooler.

Hot tips to gearhead@gibbs.com.

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.