My first wireless experience

G

greenfreak

New Member
Yeah, I'm a little behind.

I have a wireless adapter in my work laptop but since I never take it out of the docking station, and we don't have a wireless network at work, I've never used it.

But I needed to bring my car in to get the oil changed and get that tire plugged (thanks again for the advice guys) and wanted to continue doing research for a blog article I'm planning. I thought I might get lucky with a wireless network so I brought the laptop with me.

Well hell, I'm here waiting for my car to be done and surfing! There were two networks actually, my dealership's and another Linksys network but that signal wasn't that strong.

This is sweet. I know Mirlyn is a wireless king but who else here uses wireless in remote areas? My Dad has been finding hotspots all over the place while they traveled out to Cali this year and I found tons of sites that list places that offer wireless for free (with or without their knowledge).

I might start taking my laptop home more now. :D
 
I've often found myself cruising down the highway and wishing I could google something. Is that even possible? You have to be right up on a place that has a Wifi or something, right?
 
I don't know how close you have to be honestly but if you're in motion, that's not going to work. It's better if you have someone with you to watch and see if any networks "pop up" as available as you're driving around.

If you do a google search for "wifi hotspots", you'll find tons of resources for finding them in your area. Even ones that are unprotected corporate networks that just don't know enough to protect themselves.

I'm still waiting for my car to be done. :( Turns out, they had to replace the tire, so I'm having them replace two instead of one and put them on the front instead of the back. :shrug:

Yup, this is going to be an expensive trip. I figure I deserve to use their bandwidth for a while. :D
 
I might get a wifi for my emergency lappy, buy I probably won't ever have
wireless on my main lan here.
 
My home network is partly wireless. The retread plant where I work is completely wireless (8 workstations). I set up a wireless network at some guys house in a development a few weeks ago and could see no less than five (three with excellent signals). Needless to say we spent more time securing his network than we did actually getting it up and running.
 
I use my wireless laptop all the time, at work, at home.
its nice to sit out on the back deck in the morning with my laptop and coffee.
 
Kruz said:
its nice to sit out on the back deck in the morning with my laptop and coffee.
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:grinyes:

One of these days I need a directional antenna to reach the pool area. Perhaps that's not really such a good idea...
 
chcr said:
My home network is partly wireless. The retread plant where I work is completely wireless (8 workstations). I set up a wireless network at some guys house in a development a few weeks ago and could see no less than five (three with excellent signals). Needless to say we spent more time securing his network than we did actually getting it up and running.
Click to expand...
I was sitting in downtown Montreal in March under some highrise apartments and I was falling in and out of about 32 networks. I had never seen that many in one place before.....with only, what, 12 channels available?
 
It's nice to be able to lay on the bed and surf... or post on a board while taking a dump. I got a new laptop this week and did just that. :D I already had a wireless router because it was cheaper than the wired-only one. I just had the wireless turned off until I got a laptop. I just used WEP security on mine, that should be enough to keep out the general riff-raff and anyone who wants to hack me that bad would do it anyway. There's one other network within range of me, 2 bars out of 5, but it's secured too.
 
BeardofPants said:
Way, way :tim:. There's no way I'd grubby my laptop by taking it into the toilet. ::ick::
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If one is in the toilet long enough to make posts (or need a TV as I believe Inky also has in his bathroom) then one needs more fibre in their diet. :D
 
It's not that I spend that long on the crapper... it's just that sometimes the need comes up at the most inopportune times.
 
I recently replaced a wired router with a wireless/wired version. It's been nice, added one pc for the kids and didn't have to run Cat5 through the house to get to it. Bonus. Then I picked up a couple pcmcia cards for my laptops and that's been sweet as well. No posting on the crapper yet, but it's nice to be able to sit on the couch and surf or work. Only problem I have so far is this:

I have all My Documents on a drive in my main rig, and use a mapped drive to connect to that drive on the wireless ones, but since winders trys to connect the shared drive before it loads the wireless network program, I always get the message at startup telling me that connection cannot be found. Any workaround to this?
 
I'm not sure if there's a workaround per se but you could write a script to map the drives upon logon and put it in your startup folder. I believe the startup folder comes after the network connections in the boot order.
 
PT said:
I have all My Documents on a drive in my main rig, and use a mapped drive to connect to that drive on the wireless ones, but since winders trys to connect the shared drive before it loads the wireless network program, I always get the message at startup telling me that connection cannot be found. Any workaround to this?
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XP, I assume.....Start > Run > gpedit.msc

There's an option in there to wait for the network to be established when booting (instead of backgrounding it like XP does by default).
 
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