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wired or wireless

E

Edwin the Elder

macrumors member
Original poster
May 4, 2005
97
0
Ottawa, Canada
I just picked up a black MacBook on Monday. I have a wired home network with a linksys router and 4 access points. I can use my laptop in most areas of my house (although not all) through an access point and a fairly long cable. I was thinking of connecting wirelessly as well through an Airport Express. I asked a friend what we would recommend and received the following advice.

I would appreciate your views:

-----

Wired is:
1. Safer - nobody can remotely hijack or monitor your connexion.
2: Faster - wireless tops out at about 54 Mbps - often much less if you have interference from
cordless phones etc. - Wire can handle up to 1 Gbps (although most home equipment is still
100 Mbps. Newer laptops are often Gigabit now though...)
3. Much less hassle to setup.
 
CRAZYBUBBA

CRAZYBUBBA

macrumors 65816
Mar 28, 2007
1,118
6
Toronto/Houston
Its easy to put a password on your wireless, although any good hacker can supposedly crack wep nowdays, it works for me..

also wireless works blazing fast for me, any loss in speed is worth the freedom to move around
 
iLoveMyMBP

iLoveMyMBP

macrumors regular
Feb 4, 2007
161
0
New York
CRAZYBUBBA said:
Its easy to put a password on your wireless, although any good hacker can supposedly crack wep nowdays, it works for me..

also wireless works blazing fast for me, any loss in speed is worth the freedom to move around
Click to expand...

yeh wireless is super duper bing bang fast for me...i can walk about 300 feet down the street and still get signal!
 
JNB

JNB

macrumors 604
Oct 7, 2004
6,872
9
In a Hell predominately of my own making
Well, rated bandwidth is never realized, so I wouldn't worry about that (I doubt your internet connection is faster than the slowest inside network device you've got, anyway). 11g is just fine, really.

As far as wireless security, a few easy things is to do is use WPA (not WEP), don't broadcast your SSID, and use MAC Address filtering. That'll keep the war chalkers and kiddie scripters outta your hair for the most part.

Your router should have a stealth mode as well. Use it.
 
E

Edwin the Elder

macrumors member
Original poster
May 4, 2005
97
0
Ottawa, Canada
thanks

I think the issue is solved

my wife is complaining about the 20 foot cable I'm dragging about - so I'll install the Airport Express I picked up

it really doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a lapyop and not to use the wireless capability

kind of defeats the purpose

maybe I'll pick up the bluetooth mouse as well
 
O

orangemacapple

macrumors 6502
Sep 1, 2006
442
0
Raleigh
When you consider your internet connection is only about 6 Mbps or less, you can handle about 10 computers on the express -- it's 10x as fast as your dsl can deliver.

my dsl is 1.5 Mbps and the express worked fine for me. i did up to the new xtreme because of the wireless hd support. now my 2 printers and 2 hd's are in a closet out of sight cutting down on noise.

just remember, your internet connection will slow down if you use several computers -- not because of the airport, but because they are all sharing the same dsl connection.

and with the express you can stream itunes to your stereo and print wirelessly.

you will wonder how you ever did without wireless computing.
 
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