08-11-2005, 06:17 AM
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Hands-on continued:
Quote:
Once you set your DS to connect via USB, you still need to approve the connection so that every Joe and his girlfriend won't leech off your bandwidth. The system tray will inform you when a DS system has tried to connect to your PC.
The man icon will turn blue to show that the permission has been granted to that Nintendo DS system. When the system goes online, that window will show that they're connected to the internet.
The connection within our office has a ton of firewall security, but the Nintendo DS adapter managed to punch right through to the Nintendo service with no problems. The distance between PC and DS is obviously limited, but I managed to keep a strong connection within almost 35 feet away…complete with cubicle furniture blocking the way. Any further dropped the connection from three bars to two, with only slight lag. A few steps further knocked the connection to a single bar, and that's when the lag really kicked in.
The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is also made for those who want to connect to wireless links that the Nintendo DS can't access right out of the box. Say you've stepped into a Starbucks -- to connect to their wireless network, you need to launch a IE-compatible browser which automatically sends you to their logon page for credit card or user information. This browser can't be pulled up on the DS, so the DS can't connect. But if you connect with a laptop, and then use the USB Connector to link your DS to the laptop, you'll be able to piggyback onto that laptop's bandwidth and access the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Pretty handy. You just need to make sure that each computer you want to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Adapter on has the software installed and ready to go.
The one downside: since you're using the connection of that PC, it's not a good idea to, say, download huge movie files or play World of Warcraft at the same time as playing Mario Kart -- the more bandwidth the DS game has to jam through, the more likely lag will happen.
Oh, yeah, and it doesn't work on Macs. Powerbooks are SOL.
But it's a fantastic way to link your system to the internet if you're not willing to go the extra step and get a wireless router for your cable or DSL broadband connection.
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