Belkin's Home Base Enables Wireless Printing, HDD Access

While the Belkin name is most commonly associated with overpriced mice and a cadre of networking products, the company has been branching out of late. Take, for example, it's newest box: the Home Base. At first, it looks like a four-port USB 2.0 hub with an Ethernet jack, but in reality it's so much more.

This companion box, which yearns to sit next to your WLAN router and share deep, dark secrets over CAT5, gives home users the ability to wirelessly print from any machine and even access files on a USB hard drive over the network. All you need to do is plug in your USB printer and as many USB hard drives as you like. Once setup is complete, any machine on the network can print to that printer over Wi-Fi, and any of those hard drives can also be accessed (albeit slowly, compared to a hard-wired USB connection) over the air.

This setup also allows for your Wi-Fi PCs to be backed up automatically to whatever USB HDDs you connect, and it even handles auto-uploading of music, pictures, and videos to Flickr/Picasa. It's available now for $129.99 in North America.

• Connect and access up to 4 USB 2.0 devices over an existing wireless network
• Automatically back up files and share pictures on Flickr^® and Picasa^®
• Access media files stored on your gaming console
• Features push-button WPS security
• Compatible with 802.11b/g/n devices