Dont be too hard because I aint clued up about wireless
here goes.....
I am moving house this weekend and through the phone i have the oppertunity to get the livebox package for free. I have a fairly old pc with no network card (i think thats what it is?) which i intend to put in my sons bedroom. I am intending to get a laptop, so I can walk freely around the house connected to the net. Now the questions I have are..
1. Which type of laptop will be comaptable on a budget of around 500 quid.
2. What will I need for my sons PC.
3. And is Livebox totally wireless? ie no connection(s) to laptop or pc.
1. Well the better the laptop is (better CPU, memory, larger hard drive) in general the better it will run. If you want to use it wirelessly just make sure it has built in wireless, most laptops these days will do. (802.11g compliant wireless is what you want)
2. If it's not got ethernet you'll need a USB wireless adapter. Orange sell them for £30 but you can get the same make, or others, cheaper if you shop around.
3. There are 3 wires used with the livebox. Power adapter and cable, RJ11 cable to the phone line, finally ethernet cable for a wired connection if you want/need to use it.
The computers can be completely disconnected from the box, in terms of wires. Though your son's pc may have a small adapter on the end of a cable or in a small stand depending on the make you choose.
Just remember wireless isn't perfect and you may need to use a wired connection to get wireless to work or if any issues crop up so make sure the laptop has an ethernet connection on it.
i got a dell inspiron 640 that work great and you can do buy now pay in 12 months on it and check out dell web site as they always have offers (never buy from PC World)
The livebox has arrived and i am now awaiting activation of the phone line.
Unfortunatly on the letter it says i will be able to log on with my username and password that was supplied with the livebox? what name what password? any ideas
i think it should get emailed to you as i am sure its your email with the broadband bit on it and password but i could be wrong the code on the live box is the code you need to get it to work
When you opened the account they should have asked you to select a password and username/email address, or if you had an old dialup account that could have been upgraded so the details would be almost the same as before.
Usuaully the username, if it's a new account goes like...
xxxxxx.orangehome.co.uk@fs
You can swap out the orangehome part for freeserve/fsnet/wanadoo etc if you have an old account.
If you're not sure and don't get the letter/email then you're going to have to call them, should be a short call. Try during the day as it's usually quicker to get through then.
Ok...
I rang Orange up and they gave me the username and password like you said Elhana, so no problems there.
After a little messing about I managed to connect wired but then when i tried to connect wireless it kept saying it was aquiring an IP address (i think!!) then disconnecting. I eventually got it working by disabling the security setting on the admin site but now I have an unsecured network. That aside I had no difficulty connecting my desktop wirelessly via the Belkin adaptor.
Any ideas how I can secure the network?
PS I have windows firewall running and theres no problems there.
Ok...
I rang Orange up and they gave me the username and password like you said Elhana, so no problems there.
After a little messing about I managed to connect wired but then when i tried to connect wireless it kept saying it was aquiring an IP address (i think!!) then disconnecting. I eventually got it working by disabling the security setting on the admin site but now I have an unsecured network. That aside I had no difficulty connecting my desktop wirelessly via the Belkin adaptor.
Any ideas how I can secure the network?
PS I have windows firewall running and theres no problems there.
Ok good start, unsecured at least proves the wireless is working ok.
Try copying the WEP key from the Security > Wireless Connection page, handy to put it in a document to save time if you ever need to enter it again later. Set the security to WEP only and try wireless again, paste the WEP key in as required and it should work. You may want to check some settings for the belkin adapter too, WEP, shared, 128bit (sometimes labelled 104/128bit) hexadecimal key.
Manged to secure the laptop no problem, thanks for that Elhana, but of course this locked out my desktop!! so I changed, like you said, the settings and pasted the WEP key into the Belkin adater and encrypted it to 128bits and it works fine. The question I have, and this may sound silly, is that when you hover the mouse over wireless icon in the task bar it says.. type of network..access point and its displaying it as encrypted. Is this normal? The laptop is of course named as secure with the name I have given it.
Another intresting thing found is that I was picking up two other wireless networks in my area one was secure and the other(like mine for a few days) unsecured. im getting the hang of this wireless lark
There's 2 types of wireless network, access point/infrastructure where you have a box that runs it for you like the livebox or any wireless router. The other type is ad-hoc, where a wireless adapter is setup to allow another to connect to it, so it's pc to pc direct with no other "box". Access point types are the best option for wireless networks.
Encrypted simply means it's using a security key to allow access, all information passing between the box and pc wirelessly is encrypted so it can't be read.
Hackers can get around the encryption but for the most part any security will scare most from bothering. Especially when there's so many totally unsecured netgear, linksys and belkin routers around where you just have to be in range.
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what name what password? 
