"Rusty" wrote in
:
I have a non-laptop Shuttle computer on my sailboat.
Just stop buy any computer shop and get a Wireless PCI Adapter. It does
the same thing for the desktop that the PCMCIA wifi card does for the
laptop.
Of course, the best ones say NETGEAR on them....(c;
http://www.netgear.com/products/details/WPN311.php
Get the MIMO RangeMax with the bigger transmitter and wider coverage than
802.11G. You can even outboard the antenna with a Wifi antenna like the
homebrew Pringle's can antenna:
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448
http://www.binarywolf.com/249/
or put up a microwave reflector like:
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000870032574/
One nice-looking antenna comes from the satellite TV business. It
combines the Pringle's can antenna as a feedhorn for a small satellite
dish as the reflector. I'm currently using a Dish Network larger
reflector and homebrew Pringles feedhorn to shoot wifi to a friend's
house over 2 miles from here with great success.
Fooling with 2.4Ghz homebrew antennas is nearly more fun than playing
with the internet.....(c;
Here's a good pointer site for lots of different wifi antenna projects
anyone can build.
http://www.wardrive.net/general/antenna
To find all the open networks anyone can connect to, get Network Stumbler
for free from
http://www.stumbler.net/ Just install it. There's
instructions for it on the website. If you plug any handheld GPS into
the computer, too, Net Stumbler will not only log the information from
all the systems it scans, but will save the GPS position of all of
them....then, couple that with Google Maps and Google Earth to create a
wifi map of any place on the planet....great fun and of use when away
from home...(c;
Get the computer a Skype phone for the internet so you can make free
calls until 2007 to any phone in the USA or Canada...FROM ANY INTERNET
POINT ON THE PLANET!
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keat...0-skype-phone-
review.asp
Talk as long as you like. Rates to most civilized countries in Europe,
again from any place on the planet you can get wifi service, is
EU0.017/min from your precharged Skype account. Skype-to-Skype internet
calls from any place to any place, with full motion color video from your
webcam if you like, is always free. I just got off Skype to a friend in
Japan a while ago. Anyone with Wifi should have Skype. The phone is
about 80-90 US Dollars on the net, now.
My review of Skype Phone is on:
http://www.epinions.com/content_238700433028