2. Ready for their Close-Up

You would think OEM / ODM companies would be happy being the force behind the brand names. No hassles with tech support, no retail shelf space to fight for, no advertising campaigns to run. But there must be something alluring about having your name in the retail channel because I found a number of companies that are trying to make the transition.

Planet Technology isn't exactly a newcomer. The broad-line networking company was founded in 1993 and has a robust business in over 70 countries. They are aiming to extend their reach into the U.S. and have some interesting products to help that along.

The VIP-160 / 260 SIP Internet Telephony Gateway with IP Sharing may not have a catchy name, but it captured a Best of Computex in the VoIP category. Other products that caught my eye were its line of Bandwidth managers, including its A why-didn't-I-think-of-that example is the

The product shot at left shows the solution - an integrated 4 outlet power strip! The addition doesn't appreciably add to product cost, but provides real value and differentiation in a product category (unmanaged gigabit Ethernet switches) that's already approaching commodity status.

At any rate, they have a broad product line and are even trying the ol' multimedia path that every other networking manufacturer is pursuing. MU 9000VPN and its WMU 9000VPN sibling - which won a Computex Best Choice award - for an upcoming review and found them to have impressive feature sets and an easy to use user interface.

The company has wireless and wired products including managed and unmanaged L2 and L3 switches, print servers and VoIP gateways and even a few HomePlug adapters.