When I heard the following call on Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy radio show, I couldn’t believe my ears. I was extremely happy to find it on YouTube so we can share it with our readers. The video is a tech support call from a woman who is trying to increase the reach of her wireless network adapter because she recently lost Internet access. Leo quickly discovers that the woman was borrowing access from a neighbor who eventually turned off or improved the security of their router.
The video shows that, even though the woman knows it’s stealing, she doesn’t seem to care. Is this the general opinion of wifi users? Let us know if you’ve ever done this, currently do this, or would never do this. We need to know.
HOW WOULD YOU RATE ACER PC’S VS. DELL, MACK OR HP? I KNOW HAVE A THREE YEAR OLD DELL, DIMENSION E510 RUNNING MICROSOFT XP. LOOKING FOR A FASTER MACHINE AND STATESIDE TROUBLE SHOOTING.
REGARDS.
A Mac is a different Operating System, so I will only compare the PCs. Out of the three, I like the Dell computers the best–but Acer is a strong third behind HP. You will often get the most value out of an Acer, as these are cheaper machines but the quality is still very good. No matter what you get, you’ll want to put as much RAM in them as you can afford. 4GB is a sweet spot.
I’ve seen *so many* open Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) in residential areas that it is quite scary and the number of people who happen to use a neighbor’s unencrypted AP would most definitely not be insignificant. Using an open Wi-Fi AP (as Leo mentions) is not good (serious understatement) as you’re often connecting to sites such as Facebook and such using the http: protocol (instead of https) and sending your password over the air in cleartext.
I’ve even seen an open Wi-Fi AP in a Queensland Government office. I’ve no doubt it wasn’t even authorised to be connected to their LAN, but there it was!
People just don’t understand the security issues with open Wi-Fi APs. Many home users buy a box, have some nephew who knows Xbox or Wii get it working somehow, then go blindly about their day not even thinking about the gateway they just opened to their lives (and, more importantly, their children’s lives).