I agree, I also use one of those, they can work very well. Do you use this setup over the public internet?
I'm afraid this wouldn't work for me here with the type of connection I have right now. Anyway, I'd rather have radarbox running permanently on my home pc, and just check in every now and then from my laptop in remote location anywhere in the world, without having to switch from one software installation to another (where you potentially need to sync multiple databases).
The problem with usb is that it was never really meant for distances longer than 5m. with repeaters, you can get 10-15m on usb cable (2-3 chained 5m cables each with a repeater at the end). if you use cat5 or cat6 for the usb data, you can get up to 100m. with a "intelligent" server appliance, like ubox, in between, to mediate, you can go a lot further in most cases. but it's still tricky, and not always reliable, depending on the connection. after the initial handshake to unlock radarbox, a (hex?) challenge-response, the sw and hw are constantly exchanging ping-pongs, kind of a heartbeat check. unless you stay within usb timeout limits - and they are very low, you will have intermittent loss of connection. also, bandwidth can be an issue over the public internet.
there are a lot of software solutions for redirecting raw usb data over a network, suns's virtualbox (virtulization sw) offers this funtionality for free, others charge 30-200$, then there are hw appliances like ubox, priced 50-500$. if you have a connection you manage yourself entirely, from end to end, with a permanent radarbox on one end, and a permamenet computer at the other end, it's worth considering just redirecting the usb output. Of course this gives a superior experience at the local end because the sw is running where you are. But for anything else, I think remote desktop is more reliable.
