i hate wireless. i've set up three. one belkin, one netgear, and one airport. but amazingly asinine little things will kill the connectivity. keep in mind i am not critizing any of these companies for inferior products. merely the fact that wireless networking is a fickle fickle beast. i've had friends that have theirs running perfectly. i have my apt. wired and it helps. i know that it's the stupid cable internet going out and not my network if things don't work.

belkin- the remote computer sat in a place where if bumped, it could lose the connection and i'd have to fiddle with 1/64" corrections to the antenna to get it back. (PCs)

netgear- completely unreliable signal. interrupted by some cell phone use. (PCs)

apple airport- looked cool. compatability problems and communication problems via appletalk (Mac)

if you use cable. it'll almost certainly work. you might find that your home prevents a good connection and you have to place the router or computer somewhere a bit funky. if you have the time/money to experiment, wireless is nice. but don't expect it to be wonderful. the signal can die in strange places. wires won't.

if you want connect a portable hard drive to your desktop you're be much better off connecting it via firewire, USB 2.0, or even wired networking. there is not much of a speed penalty for using wireless for internet access, but for transferring files between devices within the same network, it's a real dog. your file transfers will be 1/2 to 1/10 the speed they would be using wires. firewire would be your best choice for connecting the hard drive unless you need more than one computer to access the drive simultaneously. you can consider whether you want to access the internet wirelessly as a seperate issue. luckily just about all wireless routers also give you the option to connect with wires. just make sure you know what to do do secure your wireless connection before going online.

Hey Ants.
Get a good Computer geek, like my Bro-In-Law (see "Most Dangerous Things..." Post). He set me up quick & have had 99.9% up time, w/ no problems. I usually have excellent luck in free wi-fi sites (like Octane, point of Howell Mill & Marietta Blvd), as well. At home I'm running a Linksys router. The laptop's got a proprietary wi-fi receiver (i suppose, it's a Compaq). I'm one of those who is very impatient w/ PC problems, so for me to say good things about a PC product is amazing.

the new 'g' standard for wireless will make wireless harddrives practical

and soon we'll have 'n'...so it won't be long before it's all wireless. I, personally, would like the reliability of wires or at least the option.

I've got two Maxtor externals hard drives - 250 and 300 gigs - that are just great. They are the most affordable and come in firewire and usb 2 for the same unit (unlike Lacie and others).

Apple's Airport is generally pretty good. It is notably easier to set up than any PC wifi I've tried. ACFT may be able to fill you in on the details of his/her appletalk problem, but unless you have special requirements, you probably won't be using appletalk anyway.

An Airport base station will work fine with PCs and Macs.

Don't believe the ranges or speeds that manufacturers give (even for 'g', which is what airport is). As soon as you get a wall or two in between your base station and your laptop, the signal strength gets weak pretty quick. I can get a connection in about half of my house - up to 10m away from the base in real life conditions.

Also, consider that you don't actually need a base-station. If you have a computer that is on most of the time and plugged into your internet connection, it can share wirelessly by just adding a wireless card.

Thanks for the responses people. I still am trying to figure out which router will work the best and according to all of the online reviews, none of them work very well at all. I am quite intrigued by agfa8x's notion of using just a wireless card to glean a wireless signal from my pc instead of having to buy a router and hope that it will work. Could someone explain it to me and point to a product that might work?

hey all . . . I am using a combination of wired / wireless with a netgear wired router and an airport express for wireless. I use apple macs and my wife has pc laptops. Both connect perfectly and I have the wireless protected with WPA2. I have an HP Jetdirect parallel to ethernet print server which has an older HP Laserjet 6L connected to the netgear router. I have set it up so I can print wirelessly. I have had minimal issues with this setup. Love my wireless!

southpaw-

i don't know if having no router method will work with just a wireless card. i'm just saying that as it's the first i've heard of that. make sure you check up on the details.

i also forgot to mention that i like wires cause it's more secure and controllable

if there's a wireless card out there that allows pc to pc connection without a router i've never heard of it. such a thing may exist, but i guarantee if you just pick up the first one you see at best buy it won't do that. if it does exist, i don't see that it would be any easier to use or any less prone to losing connectivity than a router.

to share an internet connection with multiple computers or devices you need a NAT box. consumer oriented routers generally have this function built in and it works seamlessly. wireless cards don't. a NAT box allows you to connect to the internet with one IP address and assigns its own internal IP addresses to each connected computer. that function also allows it to serve as a firewall, keeping out unwanted internet traffic.

if you're using windows and have a broadband internet connection, especially if you're not meticulous about keeping up with the security patches, you're computer will be hosed in a matter of minutes if you're not behind some sort of firewall. windows xp now has a software firewall that works reasonably well, but not as effortlessly as the ones built into routers. windows also has a way to set up sharing of internet connections across multiple computers, but the setup is very painful, especially when you can plug in a router and be online in a matter of seconds.

i would not let the bad reviews wireless routers are getting scare you away. i've set up a few and have never had any major problems. most of the bad reviews probably come from people who did not take the time to secure their connection and then had it compromised by hackers or from those who expected to be able to take their computer 300 feet from the base station and still have it connect flawlessly. neither are realistic expectations.

also, i still don't quite understand exactly what you're trying to do southpaw. from your original post it sounded like you just had a pc and an external hard drive to connect. now it sounds like you have a pc that's already connected and you want to also be able to connect a laptop?

bryan, windows xp and 2000 have the ability to share a connection. if there was a wireless card in the pc, then the connection could be routed through the wireless card, no?

wisof; Are only the professional (not home) versions of windows capable of such a thing?

That is a good question, I only use 2000 Pro and XP Pro . . .

I have my home pc with a wireless router (whatever came with SBC Yahoo DSL - I think it's called 2wire) and my girlfriend uses her mac laptop (with airport that came with it) with it. We've had it for a year, never had a problem. I use XP Home I believe and she has OSX.something. I think there is a way for her to print to my printer through the wireless router but she's never had the desire to so I haven't really looked into it.

dell laptop and an apple airport is allowing me to type this message from the comfort of my terrace overlooking the Caribbean sea