Overview

Look Mom! No Wires!

You want a home LAN, but you don't want to run networking cable all over the house. Fortunately, there are new networking technologies that don't require cat5 or coaxial cabling. Diamond Multimedia has adopted two of these new technologies in its Homefree line of alternative networking products, Homefree Wireless and Homefree Phoneline.

We've already reviewed Diamond's Homefree Wireless product, and we thought the wireless system was fine for file and printer sharing but multiplayer game performance and installation left a lot to be desired. Needless to say, Diamond's Wireless system didn't impress us very much. After our disappointing experience with Homefree Wireless, we didn't know what to expect from Homefree Phoneline.

Well kids, we've spent the past few days testing Diamond's Homefree Phoneline system, and we are very pleased. The Homefree Phoneline system allows users to connect PC's through home phone lines -all the cabling you need is already built into your house.

Why would you want Homefree Phoneline? Well, it's easy to use. There's no complicated (and often messy) cabling. Anywhere there's a phone jack there's a network node, and with up to 500 feet of connection support, network segment length won't be an issue.