There is no possible way for RokMan to resist the Weather Dominator! Or is there?

Introducing RokMan, the super-awesome WiFi adapter for Linux. When he's not out riding waves or fighting crime, RokMan enjoys being connected to your computer so he can get bring wireless access to you. RokMan is a product of years of genetic engineering. He comes with a USB connector that allows him to be hooked up to any laptop or desktop computer with an available USB port. While he works with Windows and Mac operating systems (see full specs for specific version compatibility below), RokMan's greatest attribute is that he works great in Linux, in fact he is plug and play in BackTrack 3. RokMan is an 802.11g standard wireless adapter with top connection speeds of 54 megabits per second (mbps).

This adapter is plug and play in BackTrack 3. We have tested it as compatible and we have also confirmed it works with many of the programs in BT3, such as SPoonWep, Airsnort, and WiCrawl. Click here to go to the item page on our web site.

Legal Disclaimer: The RokMan shown in the picture above is a human manifestation of the actual product you will receive. The actual product you will receive (see images on item page) will look just like RokMan but without any human or cartoon features, including but not limited to hair, ears, eyes, arms, hands, feet, a nose, or a mouth. While you can share your innermost thoughts and secrets with RokMan, it is unlikely he will share back. RokMan can do a lot of things (he has been known to moonlight as a DJ), but most likely he will only function as a wireless adapter for you when you are awake. Oh, and just for those who haven't picked up on it, this purchase is for a wireless adapter for a computer and not a plush toy. Also, if you accidentally swallow RokMan please contact emergency medical service immediately. The movie rights to RokMan are still for sale, please contact us with offers. Inquiries from Dreamworks will move to the top of the list.

Mac users, check out Qumana

Just this past week we acquired some new laptops running Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). We already have a number of Leopard systems used for testing and development of the many Mac compatible wireless adapters we sell. These new laptops were our first foray into adding Macs to our general line of computing. One machine that was switched over to Mac was the computer we used for marketing- to write blog posts, press releases, etc. The computer runs OpenOffice.org for Mac and runs it well.

We noticed one hurdle at first though- we really liked using Live Writer from Microsoft to create RokBlog posts. But it is not Mac compatible. We searched around and found a paid alternative that we were considering trying, but then we found Qumana. In fact we are writing this very post using Qumana. For those of you on Macs looking for a Mac compatible alternative to Live Writer, we highly recommend you give it a try.

Powered by Qumana

RokAir, Alfa, and Kismac

As you may know, we sell a lot of Mac compatible wireless USB adapters, including our popular RokAir adapter and the Alfa AWUS036H 500mw adapter. Recently we have been getting more questions about compatibility with Kismac.

With the newest versions of Kismac (starting with Kismac trunk r309), the chipset in the RokAir and AWUS036H is now compatible with Kismac.

However, as explained in the Kismac documentation, any time you are using a supported USB adapter in Kismac, whether it be a Ralink or Realtek chipset device, the Ralink or Realtek drivers cannot be installed on the Macinstosh. This means if you are buying the RokAir or Alfa AWUS036H adapter for use in Kismac (which both have Realtek chipsets), you cannot install the Mac drivers for the device. This of course means you will not be able to connect to the Internet with the adapter. To connect to the Internet, you must install the Realtek drivers for the adapter and follow the configuration instructions. Once you do this, the device will work as an Internet device, but will no longer work in Kismac. To be able to use the device in Kismac again, you will need to uninstall the Realtek drivers using the uninstall command on the included CD.

If you only plan on using Kismac once in a while, or you already have another way to get on the Internet on your Mac (such as with an Airport card), this should be no issue for you. If you plan to constantly go back and forth between Kismac and the Internet, this would be quite an inconvenience. In this latter case, what we would recommend is buying the RokAir exclusively for use with Kismac, and never installing the Mac drivers for it. Then get our RokIt adapter, which has a different chipset that is not Kismac compatible. This way you can use the RokIt for Internet access, and connect the RokAir when you need to use Kismac. Then you don't have to worry about constantly installing and uninstalling drivers!

Is there one USB adapter that can work in both Kismac and as a wireless Internet adapter on the Mac at the same time? Not at the time of this writing.

Answers to iAtkos, Kaliway, & OSX86 questions

As we sell a lot of Apple Mac compatible wireless (WiFi) USB adapters, we have been getting an increasing number of questions asking if our adapters will work with Mac OS X running on PC platforms.

We can confirm that most of our Mac compatible adapters will work with regular Macs running 10.3 and later and also with genuine Intel Macs running full versions of OS 10.4 and OS 10.5 Leopard. Some of our Mac compatible devices require OS 10.4 or later, so please be sure to check individual item descriptions for compatibility information.

As we are not familiar with unofficial Leopard installations on PCs like iAtkos and Kaliway (commonly referred to as Hackintosh systems) we cannot confirm compatibility with those types of platforms. While some customers have reported luck, the different ways in which these platforms interact with hardware depending on the motherboard, patches, and various settings, we expect the vast majority of customers would have problems. We will not be able to support these platforms and have no plans to check for further compatibility with future versions.

We are glad to support official versions of Mac OS X (10.3 and later for most adapters, 10.4 and later for the iRok and RokOn adapters) running on genuine Macs and genuine Intel Mac platforms. We also support Windows installations.

We are Rokland Technologies

It's not what you'd file under "breaking news", but we are adding the "Technologies" back to the end of our name. We were originally founded as Rokland Technologies in 2002 as the result of a merger and dropped the "Technologies" from the name, primarily because at the time we were solely a retailer of hardware and services, and not a developer.

In the last year we have made significant strides in the product development arena, particularly in the Apple Macintosh market where our RokAir Wireless-G USB adapter has captured a large market share, especially after Leopard drivers were released in March. This past summer we launched the RokN Wireless-N adapter, an 802.11n draft device that not only works with Macs, but is plug and play on Backtrack 3 and other Linux distros as well. These two items are just some of what we developed, and we haven't rested. We've got some exciting new products coming out in time for the holiday shopping season.

Because we are much more than a retailer, we felt it appropriate to add the "Technologies" to our name again. We don't expect to make the front page of CNN (or our local newspaper for that matter), but figured we might as well explain the reason behind the change.

See our improved Product Review section

This weekend we completed some revisions to our Product Review section which customer feedback indicated was a bit tough to follow before.

Now from the main Rokland.com web page you can click the Product Reviews link over on the left hand navigation menu (at the bottom) to see all product reviews left for items bought through our web site. Anytime you a viewing an actual product page, down at the bottom on the same line as the Add to Cart button is a Review button so you can see if there are any reviews. Clicking on it will show reviews for that product (if there are reviews for it) and will display a link to write a review if you would like to write one. If there are no reviews for that item, there will also be a link to go directly to the main Product Review page.

We think these improvements will allow customers and potential customers to read and write reviews for products more seamlessly than in the past. We also want to encourage those who have bought a product to come back to our web site and write a review about it once they have received it!

Apple to cut new Macbook prices?

There is a new report today that possibly due to the economic downturn Apple will begin offering Macbooks starting at $800.00.

This is $300.00 below their current lowest priced model. No doubt this will make the Macbooks more appealing to budget minded consumers if it is true, but at $800.00 the machines would still be almost twice the price of entry level PC laptops from Compaq and Toshiba that can be found on sale and rebate specials in big box retail stores. Mac afficianados will likely reply that the hardware and performance you get from a Macbook would be worth the money. This may well be correct, but if the economic crisis really plays on peoples' wallets as expected, it is going to be a hard sell to make even with the lower Macbook prices taken into consideration.

New category structure at Rokland.com

Today we introduced a new category structure to our web site http://www.rokland.com. You can see it over under the products menu on the left of that site. Previously we had all of our wireless products in the "Wireless Networking" section, broken into subcategories. While we have left that entire category and all of its subcategories in tact for those who are used to navigating the site that way, we have created a bunch of new WiFi-related top level categories since we sell so much various wireless equipment.

To make it as easy as possible to find what you are looking for, we have cross-referenced most products, so most of our items are now in multiple categories. Our top selling 802.11n wireless USB adapter for Macs and PCS, for example, can be found in the following categories:

1. Macintosh/Apple
2. WiFi > 802.11n
3. WiFi > USB
4. WiFi for Macs

We hope this makes navigating our web site even easier than before.

Late Summer Update- FireFox peaks, IE drops!

Back in July we published this blog post denoting how we had noticed FireFox's marketshare was rising vs. Internet Explorer, at least in terms of visits to our own web site. While the data is not very scientific (considering official marketshare numbers for FireFox are around 20% while Internet Explorer is at about 70-75%) we thought it would be interesting to post some more information about what we have witnessed since that time. So here goes:

The number of visitors using FireFox has crept up, while for the first time in our company's history, FEWER THAN 50% of visits came from Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. Here are the stats from September 2008 (so far) and August:

September (1st-16th)

Explorer 46.8%
FireFox 36.4%
Safari 9%*

*we sell a lot of Mac equipment, so Safari visits will be much higher than average, and this no doubt impacts the Internet Explorer number as well.

August

Explorer 51.7%
FireFox 34%
Safari 6.4%

It will be interesting to see if the launch of Google's "Chrome" web browser last week will chip away Microsoft's lead even further. We don't believe that our stats programs will register Chrome visitors as actually using Chrome though, probably their visits will show up in the "other" percentage column. We should still be able to get some good data from that column though, considering visits from "other" browsers currently register at just 0.2%. Should that column spike, we can likely attribute that to Google Chrome.

Have you tried Google Chrome yet?

Okay, we're in the tech field and we get excited whenever some new Web 2.0 product or service comes along, but the excitement is usually short lived. Whatever product it is, whether it is a new social networking site or a new email program, usually has enough flaws to keep it from getting more than once glance from most people including us.

This past week Google launched their own web browser called "Chrome" as a competitor to other browsers on the market (Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, and Apple's Safari browser). Google says the browser is enhanced for Web 2.0 activities like watching videos and viewing photos. We had a chance to take the browser for a test drive recently, to complete basic tasks such as going to various web sites, search engines, and of course completing activities on eBay.

Our conclusion? We didn't use the browser for all the Web 2.0 things that Google says it would be great for, so we are not really qualified to give an indepth review of the browser's features. That being said, as far as basic Internet use, the browser definitely has more of a "Web 2.0" look to it than other browser on the market, but other than that the functionality and speed are about the same (except when compared to Internet Explorer of course, which is a known memory hog).

Have you tried Google Chrome? What do you think about it?