Neat gadgets and Linux clusters

Neat Gadget Department: In January we discussed a Wi-Fi hot-spot detector that we thought was pretty good. A more expensive alternative, the Digital Hotspotter Model #HS10 from Canary Wireless, provides more information about a hot spot for about double the price ($60 direct).

The HS10 is a small (roughly 2.5 by 2 by 1 inches) lightweight box with a small LCD display. Press the button on the front and the HS10 scans for 802.11b and 802.11g networks and reports on the name being broadcast, the signal strength (shown as zero to four bars), whether the network is encrypted (both Wired Equivalent Privacy and Wi-Fi Protected Access are detected), and which channel is being used.

The HS10 works well, but a few access points from various manufacturers aren't detected reliably or at all (see Canary's Troubleshooting forum).

According to Canary: "Detection of all existing access points cannot be accomplished without substantially more expensive hardware. The current device attempts to strike a balance that provides a useful functionality at a reasonable price." (But as one forum contributor pointed out, a full-blown wireless PC card is not much more if not the same price as the HS10.)

We suspect that most inexpensive Wi-Fi detectors suffer from the same limitations or more. But given how many access points these devices can detect, they still are useful and it appears from online user comments that the HS10 is better than most.

Our second neat gadget is a personal privacy tool kit for Windows 2000 and XP users called Stealth Surfer II.

Stealth Surfer II is said to support secure, anonymous surfing and e-mail, and it makes for a clever and reasonably simple solution for portable privacy.

Built on a USB drive with some fancy security electronics, it looks like a vanilla USB storage device. Once you plug in the Stealth Surfer II (it is USB 2.0 compatible) and navigate to it in Windows Explorer, you'll find only one application that, when you execute it, brings up a logon screen.