14. Closing Thoughts

Buffalo Tech has made some progress in retail distribution in the past year or so and muscled its way onto CompUSA's, and most recently Fry's retail store shelves. But even though Buffalo Tech's parent company Melco commands impressive worldwide market share, it's still struggling for consumer "mindshare" in the U.S. networking marketplace.

The company is hoping that AOSS can really capture the wireless networking consumer's interest by making secure wireless network setup a true no-brainer. They also hope to extend AOSS to handle wireless-enabled consumer products such as multimedia and DVD players, where it could provide an even larger benefit to folks who don't want to know anything about wresting a wireless network into submission.

AOSS isn't perfect, but it's good enough. And it will be a gift from above for many people who are currently convinced that wireless networking just isn't worth the hassle. But it's best appreciated by people who have done WLAN setup the hard way. But then again, those folks don't really need it now, do they?