I answered a question recently from someone who was using WEP (the so-called “Wired Equivalent Privacy”) encryption on their wireless network. They were considering changing to WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). The real answer is that they need to change to the second generation of WPA — WPA2. The biggest question in their mind was whether [...]

In IP Addresses and Security, I wrote about how the Internet works — your computer has an IP address, your intended destination has an IP address, and both have to know and use the IP address of the other in order for communication to occur between them. The article was in response to a reader [...]

A reader wrote to ask for more details about how I configure my firewall to block Microsoft.com’s call–home attempts: In your Email Newsletter — Volume 3, Number 12 — September 3, 2007, article “Windows Genuine Advantage SNAFU” you say, “When they want to check in with Microsoft, they run into my copy of Sunbelt Personal [...]

I received an email recently from PC Pitstop (I bought a license for PC Pitstop’s Optimize 2.0) announcing their new version Internet speed test. That got me thinking about the variations in connection speed that I’ve seen over the years — over days and even between sites. Typically, the closer the bandwidth-measuring site is to [...]

Like many of the other downloadable programs that are designed to scan and fix computer problems, Optimize 2.0 from PC Pitstop is a program that can be run on schedule to routinely check for and fix problems, or can be run on request to fix and find problems. Of course, the most significant value will [...]

I write my weekly online and email newsletters. Then, occasionally I get around to converting some of the newsletter articles into web pages. Google and the other search engines like web pages more than they like online newsletters — the newsletters get indexed fairly quickly, but then get dropped as "old" pretty quickly, too. Here [...]

Why have a Wireless Network? By using a wireless network, you can share your Internet connection between computers that are not in the same room, without running wires from one room to another or from one end of the house to another. Wireless Networking Flavors * 802.11b – 11 Mbit/second, the original “consumer” wireless. This [...]

Are you safe when you use the wireless network at your local coffee shop or airport? Maybe. Maybe not. Are you accidentally sharing your files on your computer? Is your computer “trusting” connection attempts from the other computers at the hostspot? A reader asked me To improve security when using Wi-Fi at a coffee shop [...]

As I wrote in one of my weekly newsletters, I’de been trying the 30-day free trial of GoToMyPC. I’m very impressed with this service and its capabilities. GoToMyPC is designed to allow a PC user to access his computer remotely. This user might be a salesman, a tech support person, a business man who left [...]

Why should I network the computers in my home? * Convenience, so you can share files and/or printers and/or the Internet connection * Backup, so you can copy critical data files (e.g., your Quicken data) to the other machine for backup * Computer access, so you can surf the Web while your spouse or kids [...]