Going Wireless

More and more homes will be going wireless in the near future.  Furthermore, most public places should be going wireless now.  It's relatively easy to do

Why do you need wireless in your home?  The reason is that many homes have more than one computer and they also have visitors who carry laptops. 

I used to think it was a miracle, but it no longer seems to be so.  So what are the steps to get yourself going?

1. Figure out where your hub will go.  It's best to put it as high as possible in the home for maximum transmission.

2. If you have a newer laptop, it will be wireless out of the box and you don't need to worry about it.

3. If you have desktops in the house, you're going to have to go and get  yourself a card to put inside the box.  The directions are easy to follow.  I would recommend Linksys hubs and cards.

4. Pay attention to the documentation.  Sometimes it's not easy to read, but you can get a network set up within two hours.

So now that you've got a wireless network, what good is it?  For one thing it frees you up to move around with your laptop and do browsing or work where you like it.  For instance, I use my laptop to listen to Internet Radio or TV wireless.

Also, you can share files and printers for that matter.  There is no need to get clumsy with printers, with wireless, you can spool your print requests to remote printers even if they are attached to another machine in your house.

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I recommend a repeater or two, if you have 'cold' spots in your house.  Many of the older homes in the Saugeen area have thick walls and remote rooms so a simple repeater stuck strategically will really help out.  You can buy a Linksys repeater inexpensively and it will make your signals strong and uniform throughout your home.

You can tell 'cold' spots by just moving around with your laptop.  Again place the repeater high up on a wall.  It's no fun to have a weak signal. What will happen is that it will work fine sometimes, but due to atmospherics, it will fail later.  Don't put up with it, get a repeater at the start.  The nice thing about them is that they just plug into the wall outlet and they listen and pick up signals and repeat them.

Now with BMTS coming through with fiber optic to your home, your bandwidth will be higher to the home, but inside for mobile computers, wireless is the right way to go. Forget stringing Ethernet cable all over the place.  It's faster, but it's not mobile.

I have a great HP Laser Printer that is black and white and reliable.  I guess if I had to buy now, I'd get a wireless printer too, but mine works so well that I don't care. It's very easy to share devices on the network, so don't worry about that.  Large file sharing is easy too, but you have to be careful about who you give rights to write to your files.

Here is a hint... DON'T buy or put up with wireless mice.  They are a pain and are stubborn and 'sticky'