Wifi Detector Makes Finding Hotspots Easy

For us who travel the roads accompanied by our faithful computers, finding a connection point to the Internet can be a hassle. Sure, many of the truck stops do have Internet access, it's hard to tell whether the system is up and running or not--unless you drag out the computer and fire it up.

StarTech.com may have an easy answer: Their Wi-Fi Detective is a 'slip in in your pocket' device that sniffs the Internet air and reveals if there are available wifi networks in your range. What's more, the Detective's LCD screen tells you a lot of other helpful information:

• Operating channel of the detected Wi-Fi signal.
• The total number of of Wi-Fi signals detected.
• Encryption indicator - What type of encryption is being used for any given signal found, or if the signal is unencrypted.
• Indicators for whether the signal is an 802.11g wireless signal or an 802.11b wireless signal.
• Signal Strength indicator measured in increments ranging 5 (full strength) to 1 (low strength).
• An indicator showing whether the signal is an infrastructure mode signal or an Adhoc mode signal.
• Battery indicator with 3 bars.

Plugged into your computer's USB port Wi-Fi Detective also acts as a USB wireless LAN adapter with transfer rates up to 54Mbps. Kind of like a Swiss Army knife for your laptop.
There aren't any batteries to change, the thing has an internal battery that recharges when plugged into your USB port.

We took a Wi-Fi Detective with us on our last big road trip and it more than earned its keep. Where we were "sure" there was an available hotspot signal, the device told us in a hurry whether it was up and running or whether we should move along. "In camp," where we set up our own network we use the detector to find out whether friends are close enough to piggyback on our system to get Internet access.

The only squawk we've had with the little detective is that he's not as resilient as you might hope. Carrying the detector in the same pocket with a set of car keys leaves lasting scratch impressions on the LED screen. Still readable, fully functional, but not a pretty sight.

You can get one of these little critters at Radio Shack for less than $70.

Portable Shredder Disposes of Sensitive Trash

"If you are one whom identity theft dreads
Get thineself a machine that shreds . . ." Anonymous

It's a sad reality, but there are bad guys out there who would really like to have your sensitive papers to facilitate stealing your financial soul. Document shredders are now the order of the day. But for RVers, particularly those who travel in a small rig, or those who boondock away from shore power, finding a suitable shredder is a tough assignment.

Now comes Ziszor--a portable, battery operated shredder that will shred up to five sheets of sensitive stuff in a pass. Well, that may be stretching it a bit, according to our tests, five sheets of 20 pound paper will take a bit of juice to knock through, but Ziszor will dispatch into french fry strips a couple of full sheets with ease.

Ziszor, as you can see, is a fairly compact, hand-held device. Credit card receipts and compromising photographs can run through in a hurry. When you get to a sheet wider than Ziszor's four and a half inch "mouth," you fold the paper in half to feed down the maw. It's not nearly as convenient as a full size shredder, and of course, it effectively doubles the number of sheets you're shredding. In practice, a single 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, folded over to fit down the shredder throat takes almost 10 seconds to consume. Increase that to two full sheets (doubled over gives you one less than the maximum number allowed for use) takes about 19 seconds, and just before the end of the "shred cycle" my stomach was doing flip-flops as to whether the thing would pull it off. It did--it just slows down noticeably.

Powered by four of those ubiquitous "AA" cells, the machine is sleek looking, and fairly light--weighs in at a bit less than a pound and a half. The original "release" price was set at $39.95, but today the company will sell you one for $29.95. Maybe the downturn on Wall Street has created less demand for paper shredding, whatever the cause, that's the current price.

So what happens to the "output"? To our way of thinking, it's a bit like buying one of those nice, inexpensive ink-jet printers. The equipment itself isn't expensive, but they hit you on the refills. A box of 30 "catch bags" which fit over the Ziszor's handle (said to handle an average family's shredding needs for two months) runs $3.29. But here's another bit of a trick: Once you've purchased your shredder, if you go back to buy more bags, you won't get away with order just a box. If you attempt to fill out the order form without buying a shredder too, anything less than an order for three boxes will be automatically rejected. So, three boxes of bags works out to $9.83, and shipping $4.95, the whole Maryanne works out to almost $15.

Here's our advice, if you're a "neat freak" and those cutesy bags are a requirement for your health, order at least a year's supply when you order your shredder. When you order a shredder, the shipping is free. On the other hand, if you can stand the idea, simply run the shredder over the mouth of an open wastebasket and forget the costly bags. To a twisted thinker, tossing out those appealing shreds in a bag just screams for attention anyway. I can see a dumpster diving tweaker snagging my bag of shreds and painstakingly taping them together. But if those same shreds are coated with last week's spaghetti dinner leftovers, I gotta feeling, they're safe from reconstitution.

Ziszor, available at www.ziszor.com.

Readers Fire Back at Power Maximizer

They say the writer's life can be a lonely one. You can't ever be sure if all your efforts are even being read. Not so this blog. Last month we wrote about Camco's product, the Power Maximizer, based on the company's published whooping.

Boy, did we ever get an earful.

"This 'solution' is more of a money maker for the seller than anything else," said one reader. Others raised many technical concerns, indicating that in practical terms, the device wouldn't really do what RVers wanted it to. We took those concerns to Camco and asked for their comments. It took a while, but finally, Jeff Russell, one of the company's mechanical engineers, returned our call and settled in for a chat about the device.

Rusell admitted that the concept of plugging into two different outlets on the same power pedestal wasn't new; it's just Camco had concerns about overloading an RV's neutral wire, and so that was the reason they designed it to pull a 30 amp leg and a 15 amp leg, the thinking that the combined 45 amp maximum draw wouldn't overload the neutral. And yes, the system isn't designed to provide 240 volts, but rather simply 120--so if your RV's power management system looks to "see" 240 volts, it won't work for you.

Are there power "limitations," we asked? Could you really draw 45 amps? The answer was a "yes and no," situation. You could conceivably pull 45 amps--provided the power loads in your RV were on the correct power legs. For example, if your air conditioner is wired on what the PowerMaximizer "sees" as the 30 amp leg, well and good. But if your air conditioner winds up being wired on the 15 amp leg, you can easily expect to pop the breaker on the RV park pedestal. Of course, the real trouble is, there's really no way of knowing which leg is which. And yes, says Camco's Russell, the RV with a 50-amp service typically can draw 100 amps--two 120 volt legs of 50 amps each. As a result, the "Maximizer's" 45 amps is going to be a pretty paltry supply. But Camco argues it's better than 30 amps provided through a "dogbone" adapter.

Of course, if the RV park you land in has Ground Fault Interrupters in the RV outlet box, you are really dead in the water--the system simply won't work at all. You'll forgive us, dear reader, as the number of times we end up in a commercial RV park in a decade can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. We haven't surveyed just how many parks have GFIs--but by your experiences as related from your comments, it's as one reader said, "That means this device will normally be dead weight in the storage box."

We appreciate your feedback, and the opportunity to give Camco a shot at responding to your thinking. We look forward--maybe with a teesny bit of trepidation--to your next salvo!

Thanks to suneko on flickr for the "shout" photo