All three computers in the package will be preloaded with Windows 7, the full contents of which include:

* Space-saving HP Slimline desktop (s5212y)
* Thin-profile 18.5" LCD monitor (w1858)
* Media-savvy HP laptop (G60-535DX)
* Compact HP Mini netbook (110-1125NR)
* Speedy NETGEAR Wireless-G router (WGR614)
* Seamless in-home setup of the PCs and router by Geek Squad (4000954811)

The desktop features a dual-core 2.5GHz Pentium, 3GB memory, 320GB hard drive and double-layer DVD burner, while the laptop is your standard-fare 15.6-inch HP (320GB HDD, 3GB memory, HDMI-out). The netbook is the HP Mini 110, one of our favorite netbooks. Individually, none of these are really thrilling items, but selling them together for $1200 is a ridiculously great deal. That package would run you over $2000 normally, so if your entire household is in need of an upgrade, this looks like a real winner—certainly one of the best ways to save money with Windows 7 promotions. [Best Buy]

Indeed, having Linux on the RangeMax right from the start means you can load unofficial firmware on the router out of the box. And the USB port means you can also set it up as a media server. Other features include a a 480MHz MIPS processor with 8MB of flash and 64MB of RAM. Expect the WNR3500L to ship sometime this fall for $140. [Netgear via Electronista]

The Price: $230 or so on Google Shopping

The Verdict: Very interesting and very promising. It's more expensive than a standard router, but the fact that it does have a small photo frame (it's only 3.2 inches) and space for a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive makes it impressive. All of these features work, but they work in varying degrees.

The Router: D-Link's not inexperienced at making networking devices, so it's not surprising that the DIR-685 works quite well as a wireless hub for all your stuff. Wireless range is comparable to an Airport Extreme or a Linksys WRT610N, and reaches all three floors of my house, through various amounts of walls. Speed is also on par with the other two routers, and can wirelessly stream files with little problem to various media players, as we cover below.

The Media Streamer: Again, the engineers at D-Link managed to shove in a bunch of functionality that you wouldn't expect. You get a BitTorrent downloader, an iTunes server, an FTP server, network file sharing with user management and even a UPnP streamer to video players.

The iTunes server works exactly as you'd imagine, and shoving MP3s onto its hard drive immediately shows the same songs under the shared iTunes library. The video streaming works pretty flawlessly to the Xbox and the PS3, same as if you were streaming from your PC or from a Windows Home Server. Plus, there's D-Link's SharePort tech so you can plug in a printer or an external hard drive to the two USB ports, making for even more networkable storage in a relatively small package.

The only problem is that the combination of a hard drive and a fan inside a compact router makes the thing much, much louder than a standard router. It's probably on par with Xbox 360's level of ambient noise when the fan is on, which everyone knows is quite distracting when you're trying to do anything.

The Photo Frame: It is a photo frame, but a 3.2-inch photo frame is like docking your iPhone and calling that a photo frame. But yeah, it is a photo frame, and it does run the standard FrameChannel software, which we're not really fans of.

FrameChannel is an easy way for photo frame makers to add functionality without developing it themselves. It has RSS feeds, news, weather, sports, plus Photosharing sites like Flickr, Facebook, MobileMe, Picasa, Photobucket and smugmug to actually get photos onto your frame. It's "stable", for the most part, but it's nothing pleasurable to use.

The DIR-685's touch buttons aren't that responsive either, when navigating the frame, so you're often stuck pressing things multiple times to see if the command's gone through. But it is as good a photo frame as any other photo frame using FrameChannel.

The Whole Package: With all these different components, you're bound to get some conflicting parts. The problem we have is that if you want to use this as a photo frame, you'll want to place this in your living room or your bedroom or kitchen somewhere where you can see it quite often. This clashes with the occasional noise generated by using it as a media streamer, because of the fan and hard drive noise. If you take out the hard drive, the noise goes away.

At $230, it's a pretty solid package, giving you three bits of functionality usually found separately. Provided you can place it somewhere out of the way to hide the noise, the DIR-685 is a winner. [DLink]

Three-in-one router provides lots of functionality in a small package

Slightly pricey

The fan/hard drive combination makes for a noisy experience

This router is essentially a twenty-four hour clock divided into half hourly segments. As a reaction to the broadband signal, a different traffic light color indicates bandwidth strength at each interval.

It is, in design, an object of reflection – helping the user to manage their time online more efficiently, understanding and making the most of bandwidth strength in the local area throughout the day.

It appears to be a concept at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up becoming an actual product. [Future Routers via The Awesomer]

You'll need a Linux based router with USB ports that you can load firmware onto, a USB keyboard and DisplayLink—this one is a Samsung U70—Linux open source code, and a solid understanding in geekspeak. Running on 300mhz, this PC will probably slow as hell—but from the photo of the finished product, it looks like it'll teach you how to make a mean Kamikaze, which you'll probably need after this hack. [Sven Killig via Engadget]

Before I start explaining little things like speed, it's important to understand that the main reason why Time Capsule is cool is that it's the most easy to use device lazy Mactards like myself can back up their machine to. To do so, you just run a OS X Leopard program called Time Machine, which finds your Time Capsule—or any locally connected hard drive—and uses it as a backup HDD. Every day, more or less, by wireless or wired network, Time Machine (the software) and Time Capsule (the Wi-Fi router with a HDD in it) will continue to log changes you've made to your data. The physical drive inside comes in 1TB or 500GB capacities, and is a server drive rated for continous 24/7 use for quite awhile. [UPDATE: Jason just reminded me that last year, some people found the drives in the old Time Capsule to be rated for as a network server drive, but also, for consumer machines. So it's not as robust as some drives you'd find in, say, a data center.] Last fall, the Time Capsule saved my butt when my laptop's drive died overnight. Miraculously, after dropping in a new HDD, the OS X install discs asked me if I wanted to restore from a previous Time Capsule/Machine backup, and ended up losing only 2 hours of data. Two hours!

There's more on the Time Machine and Capsule relationship in our intial walkthrough review.

So, if you want Mac backup in one simple unit, there is no better solution than a Time Capsule. And this one is slightly improved over the last. But unlike a year ago when the first generation drive came out, there are other options that are slightly cheaper. More on these later, after the TC performance tests.

First, let's look at the improvements Apple has made in this hardware and to the previous generation's via firmware.

• Dual Band: Two radios instead of one so you can run in 802.11n on both the 5GHz frequency (very fast, although not as interference or wall/door resistant as 2.4GHz) and on 2.4GHz, while older devices with 802.11b or g simply run on the 2.4 band. The last generation of Time Capsule had both band options, but you had to choose one, and that meant almost always choosing 2.4GHz for max compatibility. Having dual channels—which show up as separate Wi-Fi access points but are on the same network—gives you another lane to drive in while the one is saturated with media streaming, a backup or giant file transfers. Somehow, the new antennas are 6DB stronger than the previous antennas, according to the AP Grapher program.

This resulted in an outdoor walking test of about 100 feet of usable range vs 70 for the old unit, about 30% in a sparse area with few other Wi-Fi signals around. (I tested using the 5GHz N mode on both Time Capsules, and 2.4GHz mode on the second band on the new Time Capsule. In the above chart, you can see the DB ratings, with closer to zero being stronger. In the chart, the SSID "APL-N" is the old Time Cap, and "Network" is the old WRT54AG Linksys router.)

The computers connected to the Time Capsule's N network at between 300 and 270mbits per second. I sent some a file—a 150MB 1080p quicktime trailer to JJ Abram's new Star Trek movie—over the network to a computer on the same type of wi-fi connection and found the new Time Capsule to be slightly faster than the old one and even faster than a top-line Linksys router.

*Shorter times are better.

*One caveat on the newer Linksys WRT610N results—Jason Chen helped me test the new Linksys which he has at his house: The wi-fi congestion in his area is undoubtedly greater in his urban living space, compared to the cabin in the woods where I tested. I'd expect the score to be closer if not on par with the Time Capsule in the woods.

• Remote Disk: If you've got Apple's useful $100 per year Mobile Me service, you can access the data on your Time Capsule's drive from anywhere you've got an internet connection, without knowing your IP address.

Mobile Me's service keeps track of the Time Capsule's address and passes it onto your machines that are registered with the service. It shows up as a drive on your Finder's side bar. Handy! But testing showed that the drive did not always show up on remote machines, and there's no clear way to force the remote drive to mount.

• Guest Mode: Guest mode is extremely simple, creating a different network SSID and security key (optional) on the 2.4GHz band, while keeping the other two access points for your personal use. It separates the network from all your private network's disks, computers, and shared resources by using a different subnet. Guest mode does not include things we'd like to see, like a way to throttle guest bandwidth. It's not an important or useful feature, unless you're making a habit of letting people you don't trust use your internet. Unlike the Mobile Me remote disk function, guest mode is not a feature available to the old Time Machine by software update.

As before, the Time Capsule also has a USB port which can be used to plug in a second disk or printer, which can be shared on the network. I did not test the USB port with a printer, but our previous tests showed this function to be buggy at times. Using Time Capsule with a secondary storage device is not a bad idea, because Time Machine backups cannot be size limited; they'll use whatever disk space you have available to store the incremental changes in case you want to restore a file's version from a specific date in history. Time Machine backup software can also bog down the network when doing a backup, saturating the airwaves. Other machines in the house can now use the second SSID in such a case, but we also recommend Time Machine Editor, a third-party program that allows you to schedule backups whenever you want them. I use it to schedule backups at 1am when I'm usually not working. (These are annoying shortcomings of Time Machine software, and so not something we can blame the Time Capsule hardware entirely for. Not entirely.)

As before, Time Capsule has one ethernet port for your internet connection, and three gigabit ethernet jacks. That's one too few, in my book.

The unit runs very quietly, and sometimes you can hear the disks spinning up or seeking data, but its quiet enough for the notoriously anti-cooling-fan Steve Jobs. The unit's top runs, according to my heat sensor gun, between 100 and 120 degrees. It's warm, so I wouldn't rest anything on it, which would exasperate the heat build up.

Time Capsule is $500 for a 1TB and $300 for 500GB of storage. That's not a ton of storage for high-end machines these days, and multiple machines will almost certainly require the 1TB setup if you want to keep a moderately detailed history of your computers' data changes. As you'd expect from Apple, that's more than the cost of a 1TB external drive and a nice Wi-Fi router. Unlike when Time Capsule's first-generation box was released, you have options now.

If you have an AirPort Extreme, you can plug in a USB disk to the port on it for Time Capsule backups. If you want a NAS that can do Time Machine backups but also act as an iTunes music server, this HP media box will do the trick (although won't act as a Wi-Fi router). Since the new Time Capsule gets a bit more speed and distance out of it radios, and gets the useless guest mode, a refurbished Time Capsule could be a smart budget buy if those things aren't on your "must have" list. If you're a PC user, there's no Windows equivalent of Time Machine back up software included, nor is there a way to use Time Capsule as a remote disk from across the internet, so this product is not for you.

Regardless of my caveats, I just prefer the Time Capsule to these options as it fits a lot of back up functionality and network performance in one box.

Top wireless performance

Server grade hard drive...maybe

Quiet

Easiest backup hardware ever for lazy mac users

Mobile Me remote disk function

Costs a bit more than separate Wi-Fi routers with a USB drive plugged in

Guest mode can't throttle down bandwidth

Remote disk doesn't always mount

PC Support is non existent for back up and remote disk

UPDATE: After a month of use, the Time Capsule unit I received has died. I've also had the radios seize up and stop working entirely, twice. It's less stable than the first generation unit. I also would like to see a quality of service feature for prioritizing bandwidth to apps, as well as a way to decide which machines/ports get higher priority traffic on the network. These things are standard on Linksys routers.

It seems unlikely that Google would go all in on the hardware end like this, but whether they partner up or not, just a rumor is enough to make companies like Cisco nervous—and send Juniper stock into a tailspin. [SD Times via Bnet via Slashdot]

In addition to being a portable internet hotspot, the MiFi also allows for VPN support, custom landing pages, automatic email-syncing and remote management. The internal battery will supposedly last for four hours of use, or for 40 hours on standby with one charge. Novatel says the MiFi will be available the first quarter of 2009 through retail outlets and carrier services, for roughly $200 as reported by Engadget. [Boing Boing and Engagdet]

Hanging out at sites like Giz may have instilled in you an insatiable, pocket-emptying gadget habit. But now we're entering a new era—the old guys on the TV are saying that soon we may not even have pockets, let alone money for them. Don't panic though: You've probably got a wealth of gadgetry sitting underutilized in your living rooms, closets and basements, just waiting to be given powerful new (not exactly authorized) features. For free.

I've collected the best firmware replacements, software mods and homebrew hacks from the DMCA-flouting, EULA-hating frontiers of gadgetland that'll breathe new life into your stable of hardware and maybe—just maybe—let you feel that lusty new-gadget rush again.

Turn Your Xbox, Old PC or Apple TV into a Genuine Media Center

Xbox Media Center is about as refined as an unauthorized hack can get, playing back virtually any audio and video format, running a bevy of console emulators and still playing your Xbox games. To be honest, this should almost be viewed as a natural update for every Xbox, which at its core is a slow but functional PC with an easy TV connection. (Any actual PCs you have lying around can run a PC-ported version of XBMC.)

Boxee is a very slick fork of the XBMC project for Mac, and it's available for Apple TV. As shipped, the Apple TV works fine within the closed iTunes ecosystem, but Boxee's support for virtually every video codec and free online video like YouTube, CNN, BBC, and Revision3 will suit your new, more destitute lifestyle a bit better.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Installation is pretty straightforward in most cases, with simple Boxee and XBMC setup programs available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Before you load XBMC, though, you have to mod your Xbox with one of these methods, many of which require a specific game. After that it's all install wizards and lollipops.

Installing anything on the locked-down Apple TV used to take some serious finagling, but there are now tools that will create an automated Boxee installer on a flash drive. Just plug the drive in, restart and you're good to go.

XBMC Online Manual

Boxee

Make Over Your iPod, Archos, iRiver or Sandisk with Rockbox

It's hard to look at the current generation of media players and not admire their diverse capabilities and extensible software platforms. That's not to say that your 5th-gen iPod doesn't play back music perfectly well, or that your iRiver H10 still isn't a kickass media player, but they do feel a bit dated. Rockbox replaces your MP3 player's operating system with something more substantial, effectively making it a completely new device. You get endless codec support, advanced audio options, dozens of games, useful apps like a calculator and a text editor, plus you can choose from tons of different interface skins for a unique look and feel. Rockbox's tweaking possibilities mean you will earn admiring "what is that?" questions from friends, and it won't cost you a thing. If your player isn't supported yet just hold on—everything from the Zen Vision:M to the Toshiba Gigabeat S has a fairly active dev team.

Difficulty: Easy. Rockbox has an automated tool called the Rockbox Utility available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It does the work for you. Even better, it often automatically configures your player to dual boot with its original OS.

Rockbox Official Site

Convert Your PC or Notebook Into A Much More Expensive Mac

It's undeniable that Macs are too expensive. For many, they are considered a luxury item whose added cost doesn't justify the benefit. Luckily Apple's switch to an Intel platform opened up a world of unauthorized OS X installations which can turn your existing PC into a powerhouse Mac Pro workstation, or morph your MSI Wind or Asus EeePC into the Mac netbook that should be in their goddamn product line anyway. Check the hardware compatibility list to see if your PC is eligible for the upgrade.

Difficulty: Moderate to Hard. If you're not morally opposed to downloading iATKOS and Kalyway, which are pre-patched Leopard install DVDs (this is bit torrent territory), then the process is much like installing any other OS. If you insist on building your own patched install from a DVD you own, then, well, good luck. Always check hardware lists first, though, because driver support is everything.

OSX86 Project Page

Flash Your Crappy Router Into a Top-Line Piece of Hardware

The DD-WRT project exists for a simple reason: Most routers are physically very similar, but are priced differently because of functionality derived from software. The DD-WRT firmware unlocks the potential of the most basic routers out there—too many to name but damn if yours isn't on the list. As it turns out, your budget model is kind of impressive: Program-specific traffic throttling, professional level wireless security and radical signal boosting are just a few of the dozens of new features that can be enabled.

Difficulty: Easy. If you can't manage this one, then you don't deserve a router—installation just takes a few clicks on the device's default configuration pages. A word of caution, though: Make sure your router configuration page is totally compatible with your browser before the operation, as some choke on Firefox and can botch firmware upgrades. Stick to IE if you have the choice.

DD-WRT Project Page

Download Updated Maps For Your Old GPS

I'm referring of course to capital 'D' downloading here, mainly because at the moment GPS map updates are a racket. You could spend hundreds of dollars on map data that is freely available on Google Maps, Microsoft Live and MapQuest, among others, or you can just, you know, not. Map packs for Garmin, TomTom and Magellan units are floating around torrent sites and usually don't require much more than a simple CD image mount and run routine to set up. (Guilty conscience sold separately.)

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. If you're just running a copy of a CD, then you'll be able to use the installation wizards. Some more involved methods for Windows CE-based devices require some SSH file transfers, but these are relatively rare.

Jailbreak Your iPhone for Wi-Fi Internet Tethering

Two internet plans are enough, but to sign on to a mobile internet contract when you've already got unlimited iPhone data feels kind of stupid. Jailbreaking your iPhone is now about as easy as performing a firmware upgrade, and there are actually multiple tethering apps. PDANet and iPhoneModem both work a treat, but keep in mind that excessive usage could draw AT&T's attention and ire: Tethering is not allowed on the data plan, even though it works fine. Both apps are available in Cydia, where you can also find a limited assortment of other apps that don't have a place in the app store.

Difficulty: Moderate. Jailbreaking can be managed through the Dev Team's fantastic Quickpwn tool, but it does take a few minutes and can go wrong if instructions aren't followed closely. After jailbreak, Cydia and Installer fill the role of the gray-market app store, functioning as simple package managers that are arguably as polished as their more legitimate younger brother.

PDANet and iPhoneModem take different approaches to tethering, but neither requires more networking expertise than it would take to, say, set up a router.

iPhone Jailbreak

PDANet

iPhoneModem

Turn Your Wii Into a Free Emulation Machine

It's more than a little infuriating to have to repurchase your childhood library of console games from the Virtual Console, especially when free PC emulators and accompanying ROMs abound on the old intertubes. All you need is a copy of Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, an SD card and an SD reader and you're ready to install A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, which is pretty much all anyone has ever really needed since this whole "Video Gaming Television Machine" thing got under way in the first place. Throw in extended media playback and some helpful widgets for an extra value-add.

Difficulty: Moderate. This is one of the only hacks here that needs additional hardware to work, even if it's basic. The good news is that once you find a copy of Zelda and load up your SD card, the process pretty much takes care of itself. Further app installs are taken care of through a intuitive dedicated channel.

WiiBrew WIki

A great resource for similar projects is our industrious sister site Lifehacker, where you can find a veritable treasure trove of tutorials and tricks. Have you postponed any gadget purchases until you're sure your bank is solvent? Have any other budget hardware resurrection techniques that we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Futhermore, the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services isn't even sure where the device is located. So far, Childs isn't talking. Despite giving up info to SF's charismatic mayor, there are still a lot of pieces left to the puzzle. Maybe another meeting with the mayor is in order—except this time fists should ask the questions. [NetworkWorld via Tech Digest]

The Price: $199 MSRP, but Amazon lists it for $149 for some reason.

The Verdict: Great. Even though the outside shell has changed from the traditional utilitarian Linksys blue and charcoal to a shiny dust-magnet black, the innards still carry on their workmanlike quality. We placed it on the second floor of our three floor house and it was able to cover every room, including through the walls to all the bathrooms. File transfers were speedy and comparable to the Apple Gigabit Airport Extreme we've been using for a while. The on-router configuration website is typical Linksys, but it also comes with their slightly newer EasyLink Advisor configuration application that helps you set up your network if you're not used to diddling with this stuff.

The upside is that if you have both N and G devices co-existing on your network now, this is a good solution to not slow down the N devices. Plus, one N device doesn't slow down another N device if they're using different frequencies. You also get a USB port for easy network storage sharing. Its Darth Vader glossy black is pretty much the polar opposite of Apple's Luke-white Airport Extreme. Since the prices are so close and the feature set is almost the same (Apple's $179 vs. this one's $149/$199), it's really up to you which style you want. [Amazon]

Here's Mani getting the name right and explaining some details.

Update: Here are a few more technical details on how this WRT610N differs from the recently released WRT600. The 610 has 3 dual-band antennas compared to the 600's six single-band ones. Also, 610 has enhanced QoS, Mac Setup, it's EnergyStar certified, and comes with the LELA 3.0 management utility. Plus, of course, it looks nicer.

After you have the router configured and the Predator assembled, all you've gotta do is point it in the general direction you plan to steal signals from (obligatory disclaimer which could be illegal in your locale), and it'll automatically grab the strongest one around that can connect to the internet. Overall, pretty neat hack, and useful (and totally legal) if you need internet in, um, your tree house. [I-Hacked via BBG]

The DIR-855 also features three dual external antennae, an OLED network activity display, Dual Active Firewall (SPI, NAT), Green Ethernet technology, backwards compatibility with 802.11a/g, and a 1 year warranty. Not to mention a hefty £169.99 ($340) price tag. No word on when we might see it in the states [D-Link and Trusted Reviews]

Just plug in your Sprint EV-DO card to the USB port (the ones that work on your Mac or Windows laptop, for example), and you can support up to four simultaneous clients over Wi-Fi. There's a 1800 mAH battery in there, which lasts an unspecified amount of time. It's fantastic if you're working in a group of, say, four Macbook Airs, so they can all share one 3G connection and not have to occupy their one USB port. [Thanks tipster!]

Data sheet here.

Cradlepoint