Diamond Ships HomeFree Wireless Home Networking to Europe

Diamond Multimedia’s HomeFree Wireless PC networking kit is now shipping in Europe. The package contains everything needed to set up and run a wireless LAN in a house or small office, and the part I care about is the gaming angle: networked multiplayer without drilling holes in the wall to pull cable. It also covers shared Internet access, shared printing, file transfers and shared peripherals, everything from modems and scanners to Zip drives.

The radio-based system runs at 2.4GHz and pushes up to 1 Mbps through walls, floors and ceilings at ranges up to 150 feet, leaning on multiple channels plus spread-spectrum frequency hopping to hold interference down and give the network some security inside the home. A single megabit is no threat to a proper wired LAN, but for a deathmatch between the bedroom and the den, no cables is a strong argument.