PC Range signs Strathfield

Adelaide distributor PC Range has made its first foray into mass market retail, signing an agreement with Strathfield Group to sell its Minitar and Billion router and access point products at 87 stores Australia-wide.

PC Range managing director Raaj Menon expected the Billion products to "fly off the shelves" at Strathfield.

The retailer had already been carrying the Z330 -- a multi-format media player marketed by Zensonic -- a spin-off from PC Range.

Strathfield would carry the Minitar MNWAPGR, a $99 802.11g wireless access point and router which was launched this month at the CeBIT trade show in Sydney.

The palm-sized access point and router lets travellers plug into an Ethernet internet point in a hotel or share the connection across their hotel room or adjacent rooms wirelessly, PC Range said.

It supports the industry standard wireless distribution system (WDS) and has VPN pass-through support with PPTP, L2TP and IPSec security.

It could also act as an Ethernet wireless bridge. Users could plug it into any Ethernet-only device like a printer or Xbox and it would connect to an existing wireless network, the distributor said.

The Taiwanese Billion products -- which are distributed exclusively through PC Range -- would also be carried by Strathfield. Billion last month launched three new ADSL/ADSL2+ routers.

Its BiPAC 7402VL is an ADSL2+ router with integrated VoIP while the BiPAC 7402VGL and BiPAC 7402VGP add 802.11g wireless connectivity.

All models support ADSL2+ which allows connectivity at up to 24Mbit/s. The 7402VGP also supports 'lifeline telephony' which means it falls back to a regular phone line if there's a power outage.

A Strathfield spokesperson said the PC Range products would attract new customers to its stores. "We really see there are two customer groups we are targeting with these products. The first are our existing customers who may or may not be in our store looking for IT-related products.

"The second group is those people already familiar with the range that may not necessarily be a regular Strathfield customer. Broadband is such a rapidly expanding market and we are targeting the DIY broadband customer," the spokesperson said.