1st impressions - Probably the smallest kit I have seen was laying on my desk on a hectic Monday morning. Ignoring the phone calls and persistent nagging about the size of my inbox, I unwrapped it and read the covering note from Hilbert.

Weighing in at only 100 grams a piece with a single link/act LED in the centre of silver metallic plastic enclosure, which bows slightly if you squeeze a little. A little disconcerting, as I haven’t plugged this tiny guy in yet and don’t want to break it! The small LED has half an ellipse grooved around it, leading the eye (to what I can only presume to be the front of the box) to the RJ45 plug. Speaking of which the manufacturers please ask you NOT to plug your phone socket in here, as it may damage the unit. Do people actually do that?

Now having been on my desk for a full half day, playing with and looking at the thing. The conclusion has been drawn from all those in the office, that this looks remarkably like a slick shopping trolley lock, someone looked for the place to put a £1 coin and take a trolley into Tesco’s.

Fig 2. What do you think this looks like then ?

Reading some of the box, it says there are:

1. Two of these little grey things (yep, they are there) called a “10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet adapter USB interface”, as it says on the box.

2. a 7.6 meter cross over cable (ok I haven’t measured it but it does look long enough)

3. a quick start guide (very quick, plug in, install drivers, restart, play)

4. a CD with a completely free ZoneAlarm Pro Firewall (trial version that is !), and all the documentation you need.

The reasons the company has sold this kit with a crossover cable (for those who don’t know) is because a normal Ethernet cable is designed to go to a hub/switch from a network interface device. A crossover cable allows you to link 2 network interface devices together without the use of a hub/switch.