Wireless Networking a few years ago was an extremely expensive solution to network computers around your home or office. Like all technology, it has dropped in price making it a realistic solution for networking computers together. A base station or router can be purchased for around $100-$200 and the cards required for each computer cost around $50-$100. I do recommend that while most networking equipment is compatible (using 802.11 standards) you will have less problems purchasing all your networking equipment from the same manufacturer.
     The router works exactly the same as a wired DSL/Cable router works, the only exception being there are no wires. Some routers do have the capacity to be both wired and wireless. They are installed after your Cable/DSL modem and before your workstation computers on your network.
     Security is probably the biggest concern people have with this type of network. You may ask how secure is wireless and can people easily hack into my computer?
     Firstly, if you have a solid Firewall installed and configured correctly, nobody can get access to your computer even if they can hack into the wireless network. To access a wireless network your laptop or workstation queries the airwaves for SSID's (Service Set Identifiers) and displays a list of these. Each SSID identifies a wireless network in your area. When you setup your router, you have the choice of whether or not to broadcast your SSID, by choosing not to, you can make your wireless network near impossible to find. When I first set up my wireless network, I found two other networks in my same area that I could join without problem and surf the net for free. You can easily prevent someone entering your network by setting up a simple password. This password and encryption system is called WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). This uses a RC4 ecryption algorithm also known as a stream cipher. Although this encryption is very safe it is not 100%. The University of Berkeley released a paper on this here. Chances are no one with this type of knowledge and tools will try to invade your network but the possibility still exists.
     To conclude, you should feel safe doing your typical surfing on a wireless network such as emailling and general browsing and you should always implement all possible security precautions, but if you decide to do banking or online purchasing it is always safer to use a wired workstation. You should always keep in mind that your computing security is only as secure as the password you use to protect it.

    I'm sure you've heard of them, and not the kind that come with milk. These cookies are generated when you browse to certain web-sites. Basically speaking, cookies are small text files containing bits and pieces of information that are saved on your computer's hard drive. Now before you start worrying, keep in mind that Cookies do not cause any damage to your computer nor do they transmit or store any sensitive information about you (ie. Credit Card Numbers or Personal Information). They do however, pass on advertising and marketing information to the sites that you visit. For example, a Cookie can tell a web-site that you have visited it previously and you like to shop for clothing online, then it can launch clothing specific ads and pop-ups. Cookies allow for targetted marketing. The maximum size of a cookie is 4kb so you also do not have to worry about Cookies cluttering and plugging your harddrive.
     So what good do Cookies do? Cookies can store what country you live in so when you visit CNN.com it will serve country-specific news to you. Cookies can also keep track of items in your shopping cart prior to checking out on an E-Commerce website.
     The ideal solution to deal with Cookies is to keep the ones you want and delete the ones you don't. To do this, I recommend downloading a program called CookieWall from AnalogX. AnalogX CookieWall allows you to quickly and easily decide which cookies can stay on your system, and which cookies should go - once you let CookieWall know which ones are unwelcome, it does the rest. CookieWall can be configured to delete cookies as soon as they arrive, to notify you of any new ones, or just que them up for you to check out at a later date.
     You can also delete all cookies in Internet Explorer by clicking on Tools -> Internet Options, then click on Delete Cookies.

Online Resources:
   Cookie Central : www.cookiecentral.com
   Google Information on Cookies

     If you regularly back up your files you are probably not backing up your mail stores and your address book in Microsoft Outlook Express. Many times people wish to save important messages and keep an address book full of their important contacts. These tips for backing up can also be used if you are switching your Outlook Express to a new computer.
Backing Up Your Address Book
Open Outlook Express
Click File then Export
Select Text File - Comma Separated Values
Save this file to disk or to CD
To restore your address book follow the above instructions but instead of Export use Import
Backing Up Your Saved Messages
Click on Tools then Options then click on the Maintenance tab
Click on Store Folder - This is where all your messages are stored
When doing backups make sure to add the contents of this folder
To restore your saved messages, restore them to the specified Store Folder

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