D-Link launches “world’s first” touchscreen router

Barry Collins Read more January 8, 2010

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The technology industry’s obsession with touchscreens shows no sign of abating with the launch of the world’s first touchscreen router at CES in Las Vegas.

The D-Link Touch has a small LCD screen on the top of the 802.11n wireless router, allowing users to fiddle with configuration menus and settings with the dab of a digit. The touchscreen can also display photos and RSS feeds – although given its diminutive size and awkward placement on top of the unit, it’s hardly a replacement for a digital photo frame.

The dual-band router delivers three separate data streams to offer claimed speeds of up to 450Mbits/sec, allowing for the simultaneous transfer of HD video over the 5GHz band, and less urgent web traffic over the slightly more congestion prone 2.4GHz frequency.

The D-Link Touch will launch in February, although UK availability and pricing is yet to be confirmed, according to a company spokesman.

Boxee clever

The touchscreen router wasn’t the only new device on show on D-Link’s CES stand. The company has produced a marvellously compact internet streaming device called the Boxee Box. This is based on the free Boxee software, which is a neatly designed one-stop shop for internet television and services such as Flickr, Digg and YouTube.

As the name suggests, the Boxee Box is a small cuboid device that sits neatly under a HD television set, delivering the internet services though a TV-friendly interface that is accessed via the accompanying remote control.

A D-Link spokesperson told PC Pro that the company has already received several requests to bring the Boxee Box to Europe, but that there are no current plans to offer the hardware in the UK.

Rivalling the Boxee for sheer quirkiness is D-Link’s Pebble media streamer. With a stylish ovular design, the device is clearly intended to appeal to those who don’t want a clunky black box under their swish flatscreen television.

The Pebble can stream content from PCs or NAS drives on the home network, USB drives, or SD/XM/Flash memory cards. An optional dongle adds 802.11n wireless. The Pebble will go on sale in the first half of this year, with US pricing of $120.