I finally bit the bullet today and installed a wireless access point in my household LAN so I could wander with the laptop. Of course I have to wander with the laptop power cord but there are outlets all over the house and the Inspiron 8100 doesn't exactly lend itself to computing on the move.
I've always had good luck with D-Link equipment and most people have warned me away from Linksys, so I grabbed the D-Link DWL-900AP+ access point and a DWL-G650 laptop card. The installation was fairly simple although it forced me to have to grab my spare switch and make a mini-LAN with the laptop and the access point because the AP had a default IP of 192.168.0.50 and my network is setup on a different Class C octet (192.68.254.x). But it worked fine once I changed that setting.
I have an excellent signal throughout the condo -- the AP is all the way at one end (in my office) and I'm sitting in the living room at the other end, 40 feet and a couple of walls away, still getting a 100% signal. I was out on the deck earlier, another 10 feet and a glass door, and the signal dropped to about 90%. Not bad all things considered.
This will be nice for getting me out of the *#&@! office once in a while. I suspect I could walk over to the little park across the street from my office window and still get a signal. I'll have to check that at some point.
The next step is to get the PCI version of the wireless NIC for Sally's computer so I can dispense with the 50' Cat5 cable I have strung along the floor to her desk in the den.
And yes -- security is cranked up as high as it goes.
