Edimax 802.11g Wireless LAN signal detector/USB Adapter

Most wireless network detectors offer a few LEDs which increase in intensity the closer you are to one. Edimax’s detector is quite different. Resembling a rather chunky USB memory key (which it isn’t) it has a small mono-LCD display which gives you much more information regarding Hot Spots. Pressing the ‘detect’ button sets it searching and it will tell you how many locked and unlocked networks it found. You can then scroll through them and see the name of each network, what channel it’s using, what type of security, if any, it uses (WEP, WPA and WPA2 are supported), whether it’s ‘b’ or ‘g’ (802.11n is not supported), whether it’s an ad-hoc or infrastructure network and what the signal strength is.

It charges via a USB port but also functions as an 802.11b/g USB wireless adapter for quickly connecting a PC to the network it detects. We’d have liked to have seen some USB memory capacity with the drivers stored there (you have to install them with the disc) but at $139 it’s a reasonable buy.

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