Hi I'm new to the board and hopefully you can give me some help with a system I’m setting up for a friend:

Okay this is the situation, he works from home and has just bought a Dell 4600 P4 2.4Ghz. He now wants to buy a laptop. It will be set up as follows:

The laptop upstairs in his house linked via a wireless network to the PC which is downstairs, allowing him to share files, the printer and an Internet broadband connection.

The laptop will also be used when he ravels in Europe for work so must be able to connect to the Internet.

Now I have never set up or used a wireless connection and would welcome advice on:

A. What sort of networking card I should make sure the laptop comes with.

B.What type of wireless router he should be looking at for the PC

Also how strong are these wireless networks? His house is very large and has really thick walls – will the signal get through okay???

Thanks in advance

Answer to A: If he buys a laptop from DELL, the models Inspiron 8600 and 500m already have this card built-in. If another brand, see if they have an 802.11g compatible card already, otherwise 802.11b.

Answer to B: Currently the best is US Robotics Wireless Turbo Access Point. (£120.- at www.dabs.com)
It is 802.11g but all other equipment needs wireless cards from the same manufacturer.
It also has a 4-port switch built in for hard-wiring.

Poertner,

It is a souped-up version of 802.11g that can reach nearly 100Mbps and has a much stronger signal than any other 802.11g gear. Hence it is imperative to use USR's own turbo-compatible stuff for the rest of your equipment.

D-Link is doing something similar, but aren't as picky on all gear being D-Link, though it does have to support the "tweak" that D-Link uses to gain higher bandwidth...

I recently bought one for my father, who has a Dell laptop, and, to quote McDonald's, he's "loving it"...
The store I bought it at had been selling D-Link routers/Access points/switches for more than 3 years, and only had 3 returns...

Answer to B:
Get a card that has the following, in one piece:
ISDN, Analogue, LAN 10/100
They cost a wee bit more than a regular ISDN/Analogue modem, but will make it much easier for your friend to connect anywhere in Europe...
My Uncle travels a lot, and after I got him to buy a card like that, he's online wherever he goes... It's no longer a problem if the hotel only offers analogue phonelines, ISDN, or if it has full blown 100mbps in each room...

.02$

Totally OT, w00t, this is my 2000th post