By Evan Ackerman
Remember in ye olde days when we were all dependent on phones with cords? Sucked, right? But at least we didn’t have to continually worry about having bars in places. And yet, even as technology causes us worry, it can also cause us joy by giving us the opportunity to fix those problems by spending a bunch of money.
We’ve seen a few cell signal boosters before, but they’ve been complicated and expensive affairs, while this USB model is instead simple and (slightly less) expensive. All you have to do is plug it into a USB port, and it works. No software, no drivers, it just uses the port for power (which means you can also plug it into a wall adapter). The booster should give you a bump of 2-3 bars within 5 feet of the antenna. It’s supposed to work with “every carrier in Canada and the US” except Nextel, and includes 3G data frequencies. Sounds helpful, but at $100, it’s still about $50 more than I’d realistically want to spend… Especially since increasing cell reception is one of the few reasons I have to drag my ass outside.
[ ThinkGeek ]