Wireless Question of the Non-Apple Variety

[Pomme]

I'll preface this by saying that this question is for a friend on a Dell computer. She's quite happy with her computer, and it suits her for her purposes. Not an Apple, of course, but it'll do. We're both going off to our first years of college, and she's headed to a small, very Catholic school in Ohio. She picked the school for the Catholic education, not the technical facilities, and she couldn't be happier with her choice.

But--and this is a big "but"--she's in one of the oldest dorms on campus. Not only does her dorm not have broadband access, she has one dial-up connection for her room. She and her roommate have to share the one dial-up connection. (Yikes!)

Now, her Dell has a wireless card. Is there any way she can hook up wireless internet in her room with a router of any sort? I don't really understand the whole shebang, but I thought I'd ask on Danielle's behalf. I know it's not technically an Apple discussion, but it's a legitimate tech question, and I couldn't think of a better group of people to ask. Thanks for any information you might have!

 

[maxjenius]

honestly, get an AirPort...

Honestly, your friend should consider getting an AirPort Extreme Base Station (for now I'll call it AEBS). AFAIK, Apple is the only company that makes a wireless router that will work with a dial-up connection. I could be wrong, and maybe another company has made one, but I am unsure of that. The AEBS can be configured to dial to a normal ISP via the built-in modem, so that's not an issue. If your friend is running Windows 2000/XP then they can use the AirPort Admin Utility for Windows. Hope this helps.

-Tom

 

[jimjiminyjim]

Since it's only dial-up, couldn't a couple of bluetooth modules do the trick? I've no idea if it's possible to do that PC to PC.... but plenty of people connect to the net on their laptops through their bluetooth phones.

 

[homerjward]

we have a 2wire router we got from sbc for our dsl and the dsl went out a couple weeks ago so we logged onto dialup in the living room (the one w/ the router.) my dad got on his computer and complained that the "dsl was slow" and i got on my laptop and used the internet, but the broadband link led on the router was red (off). we finally figured out that since the computer has connection sharing turned on in windows so it could use the ethernet connection from the router and it was sharing the dialup. if your friend's roommate has a desktop she could try the same thing