Wireless Symphony hums along

I’ve been going to the Symphony every night recently, and it’s music to my ears. No, I’m not talking about my new stereo receiver; I’m referring to Proxim’s Symphony cordless network products. They’re the best option I’ve seen for networking home computers.

“Cool Tools” fans will remember that I’ve been exploring options for connecting clients in my home network. Last year, I tried Intelogis’ PassPort, which runs over home power lines (NW, October 12, 1998, page 50). It had a troublesome setup and sluggish throughput.

In March, I tested ActionTec’s ActionLink, which runs over home telephone wiring (NW, March 1, page 46). At about 120K bit/sec, its throughput was better but not glowingly so.

This week, Proxim’s Symphony picked up the baton. The product line includes a PC Card adapter, ISA adapter and cordless modem. Proxim says a PCI adapter will be available this summer.

Installing the adapters is easy, and configuring them is simple. You use password as a security code, so you can have multiple Symphony subnets in one area while maintaining the privacy of each subnet’s transmissions.

Despite the simplicity of the installation, Symphony doesn’t stint on performance. The products are rated at 1.6M bit/sec – but nothing performs at its rated speed.

I was able to get a 2.4M-byte file via File Transfer Protocol from one client to another at a speed of 520K bit/sec. That’s better than four times the speed of ActionLink and approaching effective Ethernet territory.

With the other home network products I tried, more problems turned up the longer I used them, especially in keeping them connected and getting reasonable throughput. But that was not so with the Symphony offerings. Weeks after installation they’re performing as well as they did on Day 1.

I was going to dub the network niche that Symphony falls into the home area network, or HAN, but I find I’ve been beaten to it. That was by the authors of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Networking Your Home,” just out from QUE this month, which covers everything you need to know about connecting PCs together outside the office,with wiring or without.

A Buddy for your PC

What’s the simplest way to let two computer users share resources? Windows 95′s Direct Cable Connection, maybe? Sure, that’s simple, but what if you could accomplish the same thing without buying a second PC?

Vega Technologies’ Buddy System kit lets two users share a single PC. The second user gets his own monitor, mouse and keyboard. All the processing happens on a single client.

This device could come in handy for two job-sharing employees whose hours overlap, or as an inexpensive add-on for home offices.

The kit’s brain is a plug-and-play ISA card. It attaches to a junction box via a special cable. The junction box sports sockets for the second monitor, keyboard and mouse, all of which must be plugged in for the product to work. There’s also a software driver and a management program that require you to reboot the computer twice during installation – a minor inconvenience. The software runs only on Windows 95 or 98 – there’s no NT version.

Once everything is in place, Buddy works like a charm. Both monitors display the Windows 95/98 logon screen. If you’ve set up multiple users, you can log on under two different user names, meaning the two desktops can look quite different.

Buddy isn’t a magician. It doesn’t let you do things you can’t do on a network; two users can’t be editing the same file, for example. And any program that uses and locks an initialization file while it runs may not behave as expected. I could run the same copy of Forte’s Agent newsreader on both stations, but the one that started second couldn’t see the list of newsgroups available.

To get around this, you can install multiple copies of an application to different directories for use by multiple users. Just make sure you keep your licenses legal.

The primary computer user runs the Buddy Control Center application to activate the Buddy station. This program includes an applet that lets you send messages back and forth between the two stations, but given that the Buddy station is tethered to the host by a 15-foot cable, it might be easier just to poke your head over the cubicle. A 50-foot cable is also available.

Buddy is a useful computer tool, but it won’t curl up on your lap when you settle down with some exciting software documentation, as a furry buddy will. Allow me to digress on a subject near to my heart. You can find a new best friend through one of the many pet rescue organizations across the country; never buy a dog or cat from a pet store. Visit www.petfinder.org, run an Internet search to find an animal shelter near you, or e-mail me for a list of canine rescue sites.

If you already have a pet, make sure you spay or neuter. An unwanted pet is a much sadder thing than an obsolete computer.