So, I suppose we can expect you to write while making a sandwich?

I must take the usual precautions to keep stuff from falling into the keyboard, of course, but I figure that anywhere within range is at least plausible.

Just be sure to lock it down. If your neighborhood is like mine I can see 3 other networks from my living room, 2 of which I could use if I were so inclined. Congrats on coming out of the wired age.

Well, until I learn how to work WPA (which apparently isn't on my notebook yet, and I am loath to install SP2 just to get it), I'm running 128-bit WEP. Then again, anything is crackable given enough time and willpower.

My wife recently complained that our wireless signal was degrading intermittently, so I went to the Big Box Electronics Store to Be Named Later (If At All) to see about getting something to pick up and amplify the signal in the vicinity of her computer.

Ended up instead simply putting her computer back on wired networking, via a gadget that sends Ethernet over the house electrical wiring.

Since the reason she went wireless in the first place was to eliminate ugly Cat5 cable festoonage down the stairs and across the front of the house, this not only restores her signal strength and throughput to pre-wireless levels, but with one additional gadget we could take our TiVo off wireless too -- although, not being very demanding of bandwidth, it seems to be working fine with the WiFi.

There's a hotel in Pierre, South Dakota that provides Net service through the power lines; I stayed there during WT '04. Seemed to work pretty well. Then again, they also had a hot tub upstairs right over the lobby.

You do not even have to use the encryption now. You use the "exclusion" feature by telling the router the MAC address of your wireless card(s). Others can still see your network but can't do anything because the router just won't talk to them.