Got my first laptop PC

[Barlow]

Compaq c700. Thought long and hard on this one. Ha, 24 hours to be exact. I couldn't find any reviews on this one good, or bad. But the price was very descent. $450. I never use a PC at it's full potential. Just a gadget to play with.
Bad thing is, it has Vista. Which may eventually turn out well. But, for right now, I am having a difficult navigating my way around. It's suppose to be able to do the wifi thang. Got a buddy who lives three houses down from me, said I could piggy back off him from time to time. But, I dont think I can from my home. At least, I haven't been able to yet.
I found something called netstumbler, that is suppose to help identify wifi signals. But I keep getting the message
"no wireless found". It's an Atheros AR500 which is on the list for netstumbler to work with. Maybe someone here can help me out with this.

[guns1inger]

netstumbler doesn't work under Vista.

3 houses is a big ask for a good signal on b/g. You might get something on n.

If you seriously want to see if you can connect to your mate's wireless, go to his house and make sure you can see it and connect. Then see how you go at a distance. If you mate is half smart he will have at least some basic security - WEP or WPA and might even have it hidden.

[Barlow]

No security on his end. I can get it from the curb. But, I guess I would need some sort of antenna for a signal at home. But still, there is no place to plug an antenna to on the lap top.

[JohnnyMalaria]

You'd need a booster/repeater at your end and a larger antenna at his. That's what I have at home. The DSL modem is in the garage and the wireless access point is there, too. The signal in the house is too weak (a large pecan tree is in the way!) so I have a "range expander" in the house that has much greater sensitivity than a laptop's wireless. All it does is boost the signal to/from the laptop.

[redwudz]

I just picked up a Compaq F750 laptop. I can tell you the WiFi isn't that strong. But you can get a USB WiFi adapter and make up a parabolic antenna and you may be able to extend the range quite a bit. My laptop gets two signals, both weak. The USB adapter gets 5, 3 of them fairly strongly. When I set up the dish, I should be able to increase that quite a bit more. I used this adapter from NewEgg, also a Atheros chipset, about $25US: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704004

This site has some methods of making up the dish antenna. http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/ Looks like a fun project. I'm shopping for a 16" wok lid at the moment.

Vista actually works well in the newer laptops. I would advise upgrading the RAM to 2GB with Vista. It will run faster and smoother. And if you use it mostly on the AC power, you can change the power profiles and get a bit more performance. Most laptops default to power saving mode for battery use, and slow down the CPU.

The biggest improvement is to get rid of all the crap that Compaq and other laptop manufacturers load on the system. Most all of them are crippled software and require upgrading at a cost to continue using. You can use this site and program to assist removing them: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ or just go to the control panel and uninstall most of them. You can look each one up with a Google search. The laptop will speed up after they are gone.

I left most of the HP ones alone, except for the annoying pop up ones.

And before you do any of this, make and burn your backup discs. It takes a couple of hours to fit it all on 3 DVDs. That way if you mess anything up, you can easily restore it. Of course it will restore all the crapware.

[guns1inger]

Vista actually works well in the newer laptops

We have been having some real problems with the new Intel wireless chipset and Vista. One day it will connect without any troubles, the next it simply won't connect at all, even with the access point only 10 feet away. It is a chipset/driver issue, for sure, but it is a Vista driver issue, as the same laptops have no problems with XP. Funny thing is I am running Vista on a three year old laptop with no problems at all (except that netstumbler won't work)

[DarrellS]

According to http://stumbler.net/compat/ ... the only Atheros adaptor that works with Netstumbler is the Atheros AR5001X Wireless Network Adapter. I don't see any adapters that are compatible with Vista. Here's the website if you don't have it in your favorites, you should.

I have an Airlink 101 AR410W Super G with two Atheros AWLL4030 Super G™ Wireless USB 2.0 Adapters and Netstumbler doesn't work with either one, giving the same message that you stated.

I'm not finding either the AR5001X or a AR500 on the Airlink website but I am finding links to other websites for drivers for this device though.

Another way to find out whose computers that you can see is to open up the Atheros Client Utility and click the Scan button.

I'm no expert on wireless but I would assume that you would need to know the name of your friends network and that he would have to set up permissions on his PC for you to access his network. Obviously, a hacker could find his way into another PC reguardless if that PC was left vulnerable.

[guns1inger]

If his fried has left the default settings in place, chances are it is an open access point broadcasting it's SSID for anyone to see. If so, the Atheros client utility will see it, and if there is no password, connect to it.

[AlanHK]

I don't know if it works in Vista, but a quite convenient Wifi scanning and connecting utility is at
Boingo.

It's meant as a client for their pay service, but works fine for open or encrypted servers. Disable the updates unless you're actually going to sign up for it.

Note that you can only use one wifi connection utility at any time, it will either disable or ask you to disable any other services running (such as Windows WZC).

[Barlow]

Looks like I got some reading to do to understand what has been told to me.
Thanks for the decrapifier. I like that name. How likely am I to remove something I really need to keep ?

As for the wifi adapter, does that work with the wifi card or chipset installed in the laptop ? If so, should I be able to find an adapter that will allow an external antenna to be connected to that ?

As for the booster repeater goes, I am not quite understanding how that works. If it is too complicated to explain, can you recommend a site to help explain this ?

Where will I find the Atheros client utility ? How is it used ?

[redwudz]

Not sure about USB WiFi adapters with a antenna. I just use a USB cable to extend mine up into the air a bit. With my adapter, I plugged it into the laptop, Vista went online and found the driver and installed it for me as I was looking for the driver disc. Then in the Start Menu, I selected 'Connect to....' and the available networks showed up. I switch off or disable my internal WiFi. You can turn it back on any time.

For what software to remove, as long as you have the backup discs made, you are fairly safe. If you read through or start up some of those added programs, they usually tell you they are time limited, such as Norton. I replaced it with AVG Free. I don't use the sidebar either, so I closed that up. Most of the icons on the screen are to added programs. You don't have to get rid of all of them right away. Just find out what they are for and uninstall them as wanted. I had my own software, so I didn't have any use for most of them.

I'm new to WiFi, so there's a lot I don't understand about it all.

[DarrellS]

Sorry, I thought I posted the link...

http://www.airlink101.com/support/

My adaptors came with installation discs and each has a USB extension cable to mount the adaptor up in the air.

The link that Redwudz listed has a lot of different intenna ideas...

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Also, I had to buy a new motherboard with Gigabit 10/100/1000 Mbits/sec Lan since my old board burnt up and not only has my ethernet connection speed skyrocketed but the XP wireless connection is faster also. Not sure why since we're both getting the signal from the same router.