The Church of the Blinding White Light of Stupidity

Wireless Laptops...

Rita and I surf from wireless laptops, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. It's damn convenient, close to the espresso machine and teapot as well as allowing me to sneak covert looks at the wife I love... well, stare moon-eyed at my baby.

I upgraded our wireless network to the new DLink enhanced 802.11b cards and access point because we would lose connectivity randomly throughout the day.

I am happy to say, "No mas!".

I also consolidated the Wireless Access Point, Broadband router, firewall and four port switch into one device with the DLink 614+ (DI-614+) and two DLink AirPlus PC-Card adapters (DWL-650+).

After some initial configuration tweaks (this is one case where you want to allow the systems to auto-negotiate the connection speed) and plugging in the encryption keys (I pulled those puppies out of my... well, I made them up) the network is humming along. The upgrade resolved the dropped connections and the extra speed is working quite nicely.

DLink is using the newer TI chipset to get a through-put of 22mbps as opposed to just 11mbps on the standard 802.11b. So far it is faster and the signal is consistantly stronger. I had been lusting after the newest 802.11a wireless network but I just could not justify paying around $700 to get the higher bandwidth when we mostly use the connection to surf the internet over DSL that is limited to 1.5 mb (down). This solution is a step forward at under $215.00, including S&H. I went to pricewatch.com, found what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay and it was here in three days.

Now to send my brother the old equipment so he can experience the wonder of sitting in the yard with his laptop, cruising the information superhighway.