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I am feeling a bit chuffed this morning. After lots of trial & error & grinding of teeth I have managed to set up a wireless network in my home. I have my desktop computer & a new laptop that I received government funding for to aid in my coaching programs. It is all set up now so that I can use it anywhere in the house. This will be good as then I will be able to be out with Robert when I am working on something instead of tucked away in my computer room for hours at a time. I tried to set my laptop up as well without any success. Then the penny dropped. Although there was a wireless switch on my computer you have to actually have something in the slot that they provide for the card. I always wondered what that little thing was for, now I know. Will probably pick one up tomorrow. Then I will have three points around the place which will be handy when the family is here & everyone wants to have a chat with our New Zealand branch. I sometimes have two or three of the grandchildren here to stay & now there will be no lining up to have a go.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
I'm sure you'll enjoy your wireless network once it's up and running. My son has that at his house and it feels so decadent to be lounging in the recliner or sprawled out on the couch using the internet. Here we have to be upstairs in the spare bedroom waiting for our dial-up to connect. Oh well.
How are you feeling? Have you been riding the trike? Here it's been too hot to ride. Many days near 100 deg. F. Soon it will be autumn. Spring coming for you. I think back on when we were in Australia during Oct./Nov. and the beautiful botanic gardens in every city. I hope your drought is over so your flowers will bloom.
It will be great when the really hot weather gets here. I will be able to take it out on the patio when there is a breeze of an afternoon. The weather is really quite nice at the moment. We have been getting a bit of rain, not enough to really break the drought but enough to fill our new water tank & stave off level 6 water restrictions for a few months. By then we will be in our usual wet season , which we have not had much of for a few years. If it comes this time our problems will be over for a while. Although I don't think that people will treat our resources so lightly in future after what has been the worst drought in memory. Everything looks a lot fresher & greener & the gardens are certainly benefitting from it. Even our banana trees were dying from lack of water. We have been using our bath, shower & washing water on the other fruit trees so they have been OK.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
LOL. You're right - setting up those computer networks is not nearly as easy as the directions say it is. Something almost always goes wrong, and takes some fiddling, to make it work right.
There may be exceptions, but if a laptop has a wireless switch, I think it usually has a built in wireless capability. It might be turned off in the BIOS, if the switch doesn't work. Normally, any card that is used in a PCMCIA slot doesn't need a switch, and a PCMCIA slot can be used for many different purposes.
Does an indicator LED light up when you turn on the switch, (usually red)? If it does, I'll bet it has a built in wireless board. Of course, if worse comes to worse, and you can't get it to work, you can always use a wireless card in the PCMCIA slot. Or, if the laptop has USB ports, there are wireless adapters that plug into a USB port. They sell for about $35, (USD), here in the States.
I'm glad to hear that things are getting green again in your part of the world. I thought that our next drought had already started, but we had almost a five inch rain, a week ago. It came down in a hurry, and washed like the dickens, in places.
Once you get all those computers connected, you'll have it made.
Love,
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Hi Wayne
Thanks for the info. The light does not light up when I turn on the wireless switch. How do you turn it on in the BIOS? I know that I had to turn wireless on in my modem/router as it apparently was turned off by default & that had been one of my stumbling blocks. Once I had done that it was more or less plain sailing to get the other laptop set up. The PMCIA slot has what looks like a dummy thingy in it or maybe the card sits in it, I don't know. Always wondered what it was for.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
To enter the BIOS, you will need to press and hold down a certain key, immediately after turning on the power. To find out which key is set up to do this, watch the lower left hand corner of the screen, right after you power on the computer. It should flash an instruction line for a second or two. It will say, for example, "press and hold F2 to enter the BIOS", or, it might say something like, "hold down the del key to enter CMOS setup". It doesn't stay on the screen very long, so you may have to try again, if you don't catch it the first time. You will have to wait until the computer finishes booting, and then shut it down, of course, before you can try to enter the BIOS.
Once you are in the BIOS, unless you are sure of what you are doing, be careful that you do not change something that shouldn't be changed, because it could prevent your computer from booting. If that should happen, go back into the BIOS, and select to restore the default values, and then save and exit. In the BIOS, the instructions on the main BIOS menu will tell you how to navigate, select, and save your choices, (usually by means of the directional keys, the "Escape" key, and the "Enter" key), and it will tell you how to save your new settings when you exit, or how to exit and discard any changes. Since there are many, many BIOS arrangements, I can't tell you where you might find what you are looking for, but you can look around until you find it. Some BIOS menus are very brief, with few options, and some are very comprehensive. For example, if the menu shows something like "Standard BIOS Settings", you can select that line and hit the enter key, and see a sub-menu with numerous options. Likewise, "Advanced BIOS Settings", will take you to another sub-menu with additional options. There is often a "Power Management" listing, which will allow you to make choices on the way the computer handles various power settings. If there is a PnP listing, it might be worth checking out.
Note that some laptops have their own power management utilities. My Acer 5102WLMi, for example, (which is about a year old), allows the wireless LAN, wired LAN, and Cardbus, (PCMCIA slot), to be turned on or off, (individually), from within the power management plan that I have set up, (or the plan that is selected by default, if I hadn't set one up). The power management options utility that Microsoft offers in XP, does not offer that level of control, of course. Anyway, since Acer allows hardware control from within their power management utility, that option is not available in the BIOS.
The thing in the PCMCIA slot is, just as you say, a dummy thingy. It's merely there to keep dirt and debris from getting into the slot and fouling up the contacts, or damaging the port. There should be a button beside it that you can press in to eject it, so that you can plug in a card.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll be busy unloading trucks today, as we are still harvesting corn, but I'll check in at noon, and later tonight. If you get stuck, or feel that you need to talk to me about working your way through something, feel free to call me. My number is in the "Member Contact Information" forum.
The BIOS seems kind of scary at first glance, but once you become comfortable with it, it's just another part of the computer, and with some computers that have comprehensive BIOS utilities, you can do some really nifty, (and vital), things in there. Good luck.
Love,
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Thanks Wayne. I am going down to Brisbane today so probably wont get to do anything with it 'til this afternoon or tonight. I have been into the BIOS on my main desktop computer but not on the laptop so not sure how the setup is. I will keep you posted.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
Hi Wayne. I have it all up & running now. I just needed to edit the setup for my modem/router to get it going. Robert bought me a network card for my birthday, wasn't he nice. I can have all three computers on the net now if I so choose. Nice sitting out with Robert to do stuff instead of being closeted away in my computer room.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
That's good to hear. You're obviously pretty good at setting up computers.
Thanks for the update. It certainly was nice of him to give you that network card, and it's definitely nice to not have to be "tied down" whenever you want to use a computer. I hope they give you many, many hours of enjoyment.
Love,
Wayne
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Although there was a wireless switch on my computer you have to actually have something in the slot that they provide for the card. 
I always wondered what that little thing was for, now I know. Will probably pick one up tomorrow. Then I will have three points around the place which will be handy when the family is here & everyone wants to have a chat with our New Zealand branch. I sometimes have two or three of the grandchildren here to stay & now there will be no lining up to have a go. 
