Throgmorton's Nosehair asks: "My access-point and clients don't like talking to each other through multiple walls, even inside our single floor apartment. I already have a couple of the diddy 'range extender' antennas plugged into the client PCMCIA cards, but this is messy for laptops which are moved from place to place. The access-point has an omni-directional antenna. Is there any cheap-and-cheerful way to build a simple *reflector* (I'm already aware of the do-it-yourself directional antenna pages out there) to restrict the output to, say a 120-degree arc? I'm thinking along the lines of a sheet of cardboard covered with aluminum foil here (something that Blue Peter viewers could make with a cornflake packet, some sticky tape and a pair of scissors)." What are other ways that one can cheaply improve 802.11 performance in the home or home-office? Also, be aware that if you are improving the the reception on your signal that others may be listening in as well, so please take whatever steps you deem appropriate in securing your wireless LAN.

Rednerd asks: "I just moved into a new apartment and I'm almost done painting and running the cat 5. I have been looking at office furniture for a new desk to become the new home for all of my misc. computer gadgetry, but I haven't been able to find anything that really fits. (No one seems to sell a desk with room for two 19" monitors, seven computers, a beer fridge, coffee maker, and a small compartment to serve as a shrine for my little plush penguin - Potelé) I'm leaning toward building a custom desk for my computers. With all the talk on Slashdot about creating an ultra-efficient cubicle, I was wondering what other slashdotters have created in the way of DIY home offices?"

wbav writes "According to this article on cnn HP has anounced that they are releasing two new models. At 6 ounces it sports a 203 mhz processor and 32 or 64 megs of ram depending on the model. It comes with Pocket PC 2002, and support for VPNs. Very nice." I do wonder what will happen to the Jornada, given the HP purchase of Compaq - my understanding is that the iPaq has kicked far more butt then the Jornada.

An unnamed reader contributes this link: "PC Formathave story about Microsoft's follow up to the XBox. Rumor is it's a home entertainment centre called HomeStation. It'll offer video and TV on demand, and act as an internet gateway for internet appliances. Profiling is mentioned. The story makes an interesting point about how the XBox's true purpose is to pave the way for Microsoft as a home entertainment brand."

joestump98 writes: "It appears Microsoft is launching the latest version of their Pocket PC. Here's the announcement from Microsoft about it." Perhaps Palm will fire back with something involving BeOS?

The Fat Guy asks: "I'm having trouble trying to find a device that may not Is there any 'in-line' device out there that can transparently mirror IDE drives? I have a need for a device that will connect to an IDE bus (ATA 100) and will then connect to 2 separate (identical if need be, but ideally allowing different geometries) hard drives and transparently mirror them (RAID 1). I can not install an IDE RAID controller (no PCI slot in the embedded box), and I can't do software RAID (it needs to be OS independent). Ideally, I'd like something that would even work with an external USB or Firewire drive controller. CRU once made something similar to this for older IDE drives, but it appears that they dropped the product and did not update it for the modern drives. Any suggestions? Am I wasting my (and your) time asking this?" It's an interesting idea. Does anyone know of a technical reason why such a device can't be made if it doesn't already exist?

IPSection asks: "I have been looking for a way to sync my PDA or Outlook to my cell phone (a Panasonic EBTX210). The serial data cable didn't come with any software (of course) and the only commercial solution I see is software called FoneSynch from Paragon Software (Windows only). Is there any free/shareware software for Windows/Linux that allows this functionality? Come on all you cell phone users - don't tell me you type in all of those numbers manually?" We've handled this question in a couple of earlier articles before, however there doesn't seem to be an all-in-one utility that once can use to extract your messages/address-book from your phone (or to allow you to set your phone from your PIM, for example). Many utilities focus on a specific line of phones (like Gnokii, which only works on Nokia phones) and others only work if your phone supports GSM or CPDP. If no all-in-one solution exists, what utilities have you found useful in keeping it all together?

elemur writes: "For your linux loving friends with everything, why not get a TuxScreen? This phone is based on the Compaq Linux distribution, normally used on the iPaq. When is the last time you needed to upgrade the packages or distribution on your phone?" A phone with a 640x480 touchscreen and a lot more smarts than "redial" would be an upgrade to most people anyhow -- being able to play games even more.

yoyoma writes "I am planning to rebuild our desktop computers. What do other slashdotters do with old computer parts? I would prefer to donate them. These are some old parts that I will end up with: two GA-686LX motherboards with PII 233, greater than 224 MB RAM (the new computers will take DDR), some video cards (Matrox) and possibly two ATX cases with 300 watts powersupplies (looking for quieter, smaller cases). Decent enough, but they will have no hard drives, floppy drives, or CD drives. TecsChange, and this other place accept donation of parts. Has anyone done this? What about the receipts for tax purposes?"

ReidMaynard asks: "Recently I've been playing with the idea of a wireless netboot system...however, I would like not to use a floppy to boot from. I understand that if a NIC card has a EPROM socket, I can flash an EPROM and stick it in the NIC to do a netboot ... but I cannot seem to locate any wireless cards (or more exactly) any pcmcia-to-PCI adaptors which have a EPROM socket ... does anyone know of such an animal ... or a PCMCIA card which has a built-in programmable area (unlikely) ...?" This is one of those things that sounds really obvious once it's been spoken, but I'd never thought about this before. Sure would have been nice in certain office environments I've been in.

defence budget writes "According to this article at CNet, what once happened with Intel and Microsoft might be happening with Linux, AMD and Intel. Apparently "In a sign of how strategic Linux has become, AMD and Intel are angling to lure open-source programmers to their future chip designs". I cannot see how the low end market will react to this, but surely the high end market should see the potential advantages in migrating to systems running on hardware custom built for Linux?"

An anonymous reader sends in: "iPaq just got new gracious looks. QNX microkernel and the gracious Photon micro GUI did wonders to iPaq. Get a sneak preview here. If you are in Boston next week, be sure to drop by Embedded Systems Boston to try your hands at the qPaq... ;)"

xynopsis writes: "Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS), a leading Motif supplier, announced it has produced a version of Open Motif targeted at embedded and handheld devices with limited displays, memory, and processing power. Finally a Motif version that claims to have a small footprint! It also seems to be Open Group's answer to QT Embedded. What do you think?"

Wow. That's about all I can say to the 50 pound PDA made out of butter currently on eBay. Obviously, the Dairy Council got to them.

Craig Maloney contributes the below review of a book he claims is long overdue -- the second edition of Gary Feld's The Book of SCSI. Probably it won't be long until someone is reviewing The Book of Firewire, but SCSI remains probably the most widespread standard for high-quality, reasonably priced storage. I know it's gotten better since the last time I struggled with termination issues and bad cables, but if you rely on SCSI every day, you may need this book.

Imran writes: "Palm and Handspring have both received regulatory approval for three new wireless devices. According to documents filed with the FCC, the Palm i705 will have a built-in antenna, a universal connector for add-ons and syncing, and a postage stamp-size Secure Digital expansion slot. There will also be new features aimed at making e-mail a key function of the device. Handspring's devices, the Treo k180 (which has a keyboard similar to that of the BlackBerry) and Treo g180, can surf the Internet using Handspring's Blazer browser. They feature a 33MHz Dragonball VZ processor, 16MB of DRAM and rechargeable batteries. Both can connect to a PC using a USB or serial cable. The cover of each device flips up and acts as the earpiece for the phone, while a microphone is located at the bottom of each unit."

Logic Bomb writes: "An article from the San Francisco Chronicle focuses on a lawsuit against Palm, but talks about a larger issue: static and handheld computers. Basically, as computing equipment becomes smaller and more likely to be carried around, major damage from static becomes a serious threat. As the blurb at the end of the article says, it takes 3500 volts for a human to feel a shock, but only 200 to potentially scramble a microchip." We already mentioned the lawsuit, but this has more information about the supposed risks to your motherboard.

Blanche writes: "infoSync has got a photo and confirmed specifications for the new HP Jornada 560 series of handhelds, which will be the first PDA to be delivered with Pocket PC 2002 OS - also known as Merlin. On top of this; the savvy gadget are also rumored to be provided with speech-recognition technology."

eggboard writes "You can bridge two wired networks using two cheap Linksys 802.11b access points. This isn't exactly new, but the article I wrote, which just went up on Friday, describes in excruciating detail how to configure the units. The big news is really price: the WAP11 described is about $185 with a manfacturer's rebate. Using higher-gain antennas than the ones shipped with the WAP11 and/or tuning line-of-sight access, you've either figured out how to hook up a neighborhood of separate wired networks, or how to link multiple offices cheaply."

Frank writes: "Here's an interesting new Palm application I found over at PalmGear.com. It's a new technology from IBM research called ATOMIK, it potentially allows typing of faster than 40 words per minute by using a Metropolis optimization algorithm in which the special keyboard is treated as a "molecule" and each key as an "atom"."