Dowbrigade

As we settle into the new digs, we decided to address a perceived crack
in our cyber-credentials – we lacked a personal Wi-Fi home network. We
would have probably been content to live with this lack for a while longer,
except for a crucial fact; our mother, for who we serve as a sort of
an informal IT tech/tutor/resource person, has had her own wireless network
up and running since January!

So merely to protect our position as the "early adopter par excellence" of
the family, we urgently needed to buy a wireless router, which we did yesterday.

We bought the basic Belkin model, which at the local MicroCenter superstore has
been reduced to $49.95, minus $20 instant rebate, minus $20 mail-in rebate, for
a final price of $9.95. Yes, the other reason we broke down and bought one was
that they had finally fallen into the Dowbrigade’s price range. True, after numerable
attempts we have yet to successfully recover a mail-in rebate. Anybody in possession
of the secret of capturing this rara avis, please contact the Dowbrigade.

It was a breeze to set up; although the printed manual made no mention of the
fact, the "Easy Install" CD was formatted for both Wintel and Mac,
and contained installation wizards for both OS9 and OSX. We spent most of yesterday
afternoon running around the apartment, backyard, basement and street testing
how far the signal reaches. Bottom line: we can blog from our car parked in front
of the house, but not if we are parked on the other side of the street.

However, as soon as we had time to ruminate on the wonders of wirelessness, we
began to get paranoid. Who else can use our network? Are the neighbors stealing
our bandwidth? Can they READ FILES ON OUR COMPUTER? Should we install a password?
Should be install encryption? Should be install a firewall?