wi-fi

As you may or may not know, wi-fi has spent the past year or so upgrading. If you have a new computer, it may have a card that supports 802.11n, which is the very helpful name of the newer, faster system, which clearly comes after 802.11g (since 'n' follows 'g' in the alphabet (?!)). If you do have one of these faster machines, you may want to upgrade to a router that supports the new speed, in which case this Small Net Builder roundup of cheap 'N' routers might be useful. Skip to the last page to avoid lots of technical detail in the middle.

"The three-antenna products really get to strut their stuff when switched to use 40 MHz bandwidth—but at the expense of possibly interfering with neighboring 11b/g networks." -- Well, that's certainly a way to piss off the neighbors!

It's very interesting - in their technical tests for these things one of the things they do is check how it affects neighbouring signals. Often it's a pretty serious effect, which I love - I get a new router and all my neighbours wonder why their internet stopped working. And of course, there's no way to tell unless you use some pretty serious equipment.