My New Laptop

[Andykev]

I have gotten a new HP Pavillion laptop. It is now wired on an router so I can use it in the backyard, or any room in the house. I hear that I can drive around town and use some poor smucks DSL if they do not have protection installed.

It is nice. I can take it to work and keep in touch.

Unfortunately, while setting this puppy up, I screwed up the desktop computer. I have to manually reconfigure it now.

I don't know much about home networking and routers. so I hope this is going to work out!!

 

[farnham54]

Andy, if you need a hand, just shoot me off a PM with as detailed an explanation as you can. I'm pretty handy with computers, and what I don't know my housemate (3rd year Comp Sci major) most certainly does!

Let me know if I can help, and good luck!

Cheers
Craig

 

[scotrace]

SMart!

My house is a wireless network, with a machine downstairs, one upstairs, and a floating laptop.
You can walk into any Panerra Bread now and surf free, or for a fee in any Starbucks. And yeah, you can easily moochoffa your neighbors, if they're foolish enough to leave their netowrks open, which of course, you wont.
I'm also happy to help with questions.
Of course, mine is a Mac network, so it always works the way it's supposed to.

 

[Andykev]

It worked

I took the laptop and cardbus out to the street today, drove around and found no open internet connections. Then, like a light went on, and I realized my laptop was WEP protected with a password, and the computer was set only to work at home. I set the thing to open, default, and no WEP. BAM!! Found a hit on someone's internet connection. I downloaded my mail. So, how would the person who's connection was out there for the world to see, know that I borrowed some 45 seconds of their internet? I don't think it is illegal, until you somehow defeat someone's password. Open connections are like the radio or TV....you have freedom to receive what is sent out over the open airways.

 

[DBLIII]

Andy: A hp PAVILION?? no... me, TOO!
You can see my skills with caps lock. Lord...
Re the hooking to an open wireless connection -- there is a program out, not sure of the name, but someone here will know much more than me -- anyway, I don't know what level programming it takes (but we're getting it at work), where if someone connects to our wireless signal, we then control their computer while they are using our signal. Not like anything terrible happens, but we can record or see what they are doing. I have no idea how this works or even if it does, but something to think about.
Personally, I don't have anything that important going on, so when I can ever get high speed way out here and wireless, I'm going to drive around in town in my convertible just to see if I can make it work!!!
Dave

 

[Andykev]

hahahhahahh

ok, where are you, anywhere near Irondale, MO? My co worker retired and moved there. He is 45 mins from St. Louis. He got 110 acres and did that to never see his neighbor. HA !

This is a HP N5940 Pavillion. Unfotunately , it runs on Windows ME. Sucks. I much prefer Win XP

 

[ITG]

So with Starbucks, how does that work? I went there once and they told me I had to subscribe to a certain service provider already (which happened to be the one I subscribed to at home). Starbucks mentioned nothing about paying extra, which I might have considered at the time. I tried hooking up anyway jsut to see what it would do...totally messed my computer internet connection up because when I got home I couldn't figure out how to log back onto my wireless system and had to call my service provider. How does the Starbucks thing work.

Andy, it is nice to be able to take the computer through the house...on a nice day I can go out to my back patio (or even my hammock) and surf the net. I can check email in my living room or if I'm really lazy and tired, I can go prop myself up in my bed and totally chill. You're gonna love wireless connection.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

The program is called NetStumbler. It's great, and works well.

http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/netstumblerinstaller_0_4_0.exe

 

[ITG]

Zohar, what is this netstumbler? Is it to log onto Starbucks or to borrow a signal from someone else. (I'm timid of downloading something that I'm not sure what it is and the website doesn't clue me in...wish I were more tech savvy.)

 

[Nathan Flowers]

It finds open wireless connections, and helps you to connect to them.

I don't have a Starbucks near me, so I can't take my powerbook there and try it out, but there are thousands of open (unsecured) wireless networks out there that you can connect to easily. My friend lives in an apartment complex, and doesn't bother to pay for internet because he has 3 unsecured wireless connections near to him that he uses. I have a wireless router at home that I use, but I have it secured (requires a WEP password), so I am the only one using it.

 

[ITG]

Zohar, you sent me a message but I can reply because it says you've exceeded the allowed quota. Let me know when I can retry.

 

[scotrace]

Parbuk

ITG, I understand that at Starbucks, you would make sure than your machine sees the wireless network (icon in the task bar), then open your browser. There should, in theory, be a walk-thru displayed for connecting to the T-Mobile network there. If you have a powerbook or ibook, it'll be easy. If you have a Dell or somesuch, it'll be dicey. My powerbook sees and joins any network, and when I get back home, it knows this and there are no problems. A friend and I can go to the same place with our machines, and mine joins the available network fine, while his Gateway machine will likely as not just lock up.
I really don't want to begin a mac-vs-pc war; all I can do is share my experiences.
The stumbler program Zohar mentioned scans for available signals, shows signal strength, and gives you the information needed to join what it is finding.
I'd be happy to help out if you like. I teach classes for adult beginners in this stuff, and am president of a local computer user group.