Laptop Computers & Wireless internet
 

I just bought a new laptop about two weeks ago. If you're just going to do the basic things (internet, word processing, music stuff), I'd say you'd be fine with a Windows-based computer. Because I'm an architecture student, I bought a Mac...it's especially good for graphic editing, and it weighed the least of any fully loaded laptop out there.

I got the wireless internet card, the coolest thing about it is that my computer will automatically detect any wireless setting. You can go literally anywhere on most college campuses. It's great.

Interesting that you ask about this, because I just installed a wireless network last weekend. Now that the cable modem is back up and running, I LOVE IT!

I actually have three laptops in my house -- a sony vaio, a compaq presario and a dell inspiron. All three of them work well with our wireless network. I can go almost anywhere in my house and get reception, the lone exception being my parents' end of the house. Eventually, I'm going to put an access point in that end of the house and one outside, too.

I went with the Linksys Wireless G router and network cards and I really liked how easy they were to install, particularly with Windows XP.

Cluey, about how much did your wireless equipment cost you?

It was expensive, but that's why I went ahead and got the Wireless G type. It's suposed to become the more widely available type in the future.

All together, with network cards for 5 computers and a wireless G router, it was around 500 dollars. The good news is that we'll get 50 dollars back in rebates. Rather than spending 300 now and having to upgrade in a few years, I went ahead and got the more expensive type.

I hope that makes sense :)

Ours was considerably less than that, probably because my father's company does telecom and did it for us. I don't think that it would have been that expensive anyway--it depends on what part of the country you're doing it in, I guess.

I had my wireless card factory-installed in the Mac, and that was only $99. When I was looking at Dells and Sonys, the cards were more like $79.

Wireless @ home
 

My dad the computer geek installed wireless in our house last fall. It's wonderful. We have a 50ft range from our box, and that seems to cover the entire house, driveway and part of the yard. We haven't had any reception problems at all, but we've only got 2 laptops, the rest are desktops. He got the cable tv/internet deal. It's about $50 a month, which is actually about $20 a month cheaper than having a dial up (w/separate phone line), internet and satellite.

My laptop came with a wireless card because my school is wireless and they give every student a laptop. We can have 32 machines hooked up to our internet through the wireless connection and up to 4 through cables. So far, it's been pretty sufficient for the 4 of us living here. ;)

Dells are what we use at work. I'm too low in the food chain to get a company discount.

Ours was more expensive because we had more computers that we wanted hooked-up. The cards were each like 80 dollars a piece and the router was 125, I think.

I installed everything myself, so we didn't have to ay any of that.

For any students looking for new computers, Dell, HP, Compaq, and Apple offer discounts to students, usually 10 percent.

My mom bought me a new laptop a month ago. I LOVE it. It's an HP Pavillion ze4400 from Best Buy with CD/DVD burner, and the works. It was very expensive ($1750.00 including all accessories), but with the prices of electronics going down every year, it wasn't much more than my regular PC that I got two years ago after I graduated from high school (it was an LCD screen & such).

Make sure you get a really good case for it with plenty of padding, a warranty, a good locking device to tie it down, etc. I can't remember the price of the WLAN card, but it was less than $100 I believe. I'm still trying to figure out how to hook up to the campus ethernet with it, but I know you can sit almost anywhere outside or inside on campus and access the ethernet from your notebook if you're a student (you have to get a special password & such for it).

Apple is well-known for its educational discounts--you get one discount for being a student, then another larger one by being allied with certain universities. I saved over $300 on my PowerBook (which would have been over $1,900) by being a student. I was able to use that savings to upgrade everything (yay DVD burner!) and get a new printer. It was less expensive (and lighter!) than a PC with the same features.

The cool thing about wireless internet on an Apple is that the settings can be detected automatically, without having to log into a system.

I have an iBook and wireless internet, both of which I really like. :)