Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 7619 Location: In trouble.
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject: Taking a Mac for a wet weekend.
A question for you Maccites out there.
I use a dell laptop, fairly ancient with no wireless facility.
My wife has a Mac iBook which was given to her and uses rarely. It has wireless facility.
When we go away on hols we log in to public computers to stay in touch or use dial up on the Dell if a phone line is available. But there is a cafe near where we stay that has free wireless connection, where we could use the Mac. It doesn't get much use and it would be nice to have a reason for its existence.
How easy is this wireless stuff to use and set up? Do I need to enable something? Will the cafe people give me a 'dongle' or something? I've never use an internet cafe before and don't want to appear a prat, although I suspect it will be obvious.
Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 5750 Location: In UR base snifin all UR pantys
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:23 pm Post subject: Re: Taking a Mac for a wet weekend.
Joyofsox wrote:
A question for you Maccites out there.
I use a dell laptop, fairly ancient with no wireless facility.
My wife has a Mac iBook which was given to her and uses rarely. It has wireless facility.
When we go away on hols we log in to public computers to stay in touch or use dial up on the Dell if a phone line is available. But there is a cafe near where we stay that has free wireless connection, where we could use the Mac. It doesn't get much use and it would be nice to have a reason for its existence.
How easy is this wireless stuff to use and set up? Do I need to enable something? Will the cafe people give me a 'dongle' or something? I've never use an internet cafe before and don't want to appear a prat, although I suspect it will be obvious.
I don't know the mac side of wireless, but I know the wireless side (if that makes sense). As far as I know, the mac should detect the wireless connection and ask if you want to connect, although it may just connect without asking.
Different systems in the cafe's use different methods - The staff in the cafe should be able to tell you how it works for windows but might not know exactly what to do with the mac, but they should have a general idea so you should be able to work it out between you & them and it shouldn't be too difficult.
Here's a quick rundown of the most common options...
No security in which case you have to do nothing but pitch up with your mac and tell it to connect to that wireless network and you don't have to do anything else... In this scenario you might not have to do anything at all as the mac may connect on its own. This is probably the most common and is easiest to set up for the cafe owner.
Wireless encryption you tell the mac to connect up and before you can do anything it will ask for a code or key - the staff at the counter will give it to you, punch it in and you're on.
proxy protection you connect up and when you fire up the web browser you get asked for a code no matter what site you try to open, this is more common where access to wifi was not free at some point in the past. I only mention as there is a small chance you might see it.
In all these situations be *very* aware that it is not a secure connection even where the wireless is encrypted - logging into your _ banking (for example) would be a very silly thing to do. Assume that anyone else within 100 metres from the building can see everything you're doing _.
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