Perhaps someone here can advise us?

We just got a new laptop (first actually) from Dell. And it has the wireless
card. Our neighborhood was supposed to have a free wireless feature this fall,
to replace the free dialup we used to have thru our library (using tax dollars).

When we booted up, our card detected one open unsecure location and one
secure one. The unsecure one is 10MB and that is not the speed the free one
is supposed to be. So I guess we hooked into someone else. My son says
100ft radius, but we don't have that (the house next door is empty). We may
be hitting a business across the stream downtown? The free service--I checked it out, and they plan on early winter 2006.. soon. Some hassel about fights over telephone poles etc.. blah blah.. It was supposed to be here now)

I am checking out Wireless security sites , still a newbie at this, but they say
basically that anyone can enter your harddrive etc if you use this technology.
Would a Zone Alarm firewall be enough? Do I need some encryption software?
What are they called? Etc? I will not let my hubby do any banking on that
unit..until we figure it out. These "free" hot spots.. are they all problematic, like the one we would like to use on vacation next summer? I am paranoid about this. We are getting a router to use with the DSL we just signed up for from AT & T... but we have the slowest (cheapest) version, which is not really super fast, but better than dial-up Earthlink. We don't download stuff like music/videos..and are not gamers, etc.

So any advice would be greatly appreciated...before we get into some snafu!

I missed this post yesterday, sorry.

Well I would be sure to get a good "brand name" protection software. Especially when using public hot spots ect.

Pcillin, mcafee, and those big names have a suite of products and most will include wireless encryption.

There is probably some ratings info on some of the online computer magazines {PC world, ect - can't recall them all}

Hello, MrsD. I use wireless broadband PC card on my laptop - and run it with the Windows firewall and Zonealarm.

I've been using it since June and haven't had any intrusions.

When I went on vacation in September, I used the hotel's WI-FI and also didn't run into any probs.

The FREE ones are as good or BETTER than the paid ones, IMO. And Virus Bulletin says that the paid suites don't catch any more than the free ones do. AS LONG as you are protected and use a secure setting, don't worry about it.

See my list in the sticky for suggestions for free ones. Liz

My card or router is rated for up to 300 ft or yds? can't remember which.
A lot of the signal strength depends on if it has to go thru walls, wall type, indoors or outdoors that sort of thing.

for winXP - using encryption settings-
In your network connection settings go to-
/properties/wireless networks/preferred networks/click any networks on the list and then/properties/you can set WEP {weakest} or WPA{mid} or WPS-PSK {higher} for encryption {depending on your card/setup}.

Or you can let a security software program handle this.

I live out in a rural setting so I don't have any other networks or hot spots other than our own computers to worry about.

We are going to check out Zone Alarm to start. ( we had this on our old unit) Our new DSL AT&T recommends it, and links to it for download, we just discovered. (we have the slower DSL for now).

That stickey, Southern Lady is really great! Thanks for making it for us.

Our DSL router came yesterday, and that has to be set up for the upstairs. We are staying off the wireless networks until we understand them better.
So Zone Alarm is going on the laptop this weekend.

My husband visited the AT & T website, and there are scads of free AT & T
WiFi hubs...just plug in your zip code... All McDonald's, and some Barnes/Nobles,coffee shops, etc. So here in the densely compacted city...we will have many choices. At my home here there are only two, so far. One secured and one open. The county free service should be up soon, it is covering 6 cities here as an experiment.

Thanks all!