There is one element in notebooks that still restricts its mobility-the modem. You must plug-in a telephone line cable to your notebook's modem jack in order to connect to the Internet. Vaayu is a product that tackles this and makes it wireless. It comprises two units. One is the Base Station, which is connected to a telephone line or a wall socket, and the other is Mobile Unit, which plugs in to the modem port of the notebook. Alongwith it comes a power adapter and a telephone cable to connect the Base Station to a wall socket. Setting it up is a breeze, as you just have to connect everything. Turn on the Mobile Unit and you're ready to go. It doesn't even require any software to be installed. When you're sitting in a room with regular obstructions, Vaayu gives you a wireless range of 40-50 feet between the Base Station and Mobile Unit, which is quite a sufficient coverage for a small office or even a hotel room. The Mobile Unit has a rechargeable Lithium ion battery that takes 6 hrs to be fully charged and helps in keeping the Mobile Unit up for 4-5 hrs of continuous online usage, and has a standby time of 12 hrs. It needs to be connected to the base unit for recharging. We got some interesting test results for Vaayu. The volume level of the dial tone reduces when you're using Vaayu instead of the direct telephone line. Secondly, the connection speed while connecting with Vaayu was lower than while connecting with a direct telephone line. The maximum connection speed we got using Vaayu was 21.6 Kbps, while connectivity with a direct telephone line came to 45 kbps. You may want to check out the connection speed with your modem while buying this device. Vaayu works on two technologies- DynaRF and ALE.
DynaRF enables data transmission at higher bit rates than ordinary radio transmission. Most data transmission technologies are unable to cancel out the transmission signal echo in the received signal. This is where ALE (Adaptive analog Line Echo cancellation) comes in. It allows for very high suppression of echo of the transmitted signal.
Bottom Line: Not only limited to notebook users, Vaayu can be used to wireless enable any device that uses a dial-up modem, like PCs, fax machines or even credit-card swiping devices. A rather useful product, if you're willing to pay the premium for it.
Debasish Misra