Wireless or WiFi networking has become more and more common over the last few years, its biggest appeal is being able to work anywhere within in range of your wireless router without physical network cabling, this also means its much easier to give more than one computer internet or network access.

Just how do we go about connecting to the internet wirelessly? A wireless network needs to have two components a Wireless Router/Modem to share the internet connection a suitable Wireless card in your laptop or desktop Just about every new laptop has a wireless card built in, the actual type is the mini PCI

The biggest issue encountered by users with older pc's is the lack of a built in wireless card

Luckily though there is a number of options available to us to make virtually any desktop or laptop computer wireless. The best type of wireless card, which is suitable only for laptops, to install is the mini PCI type, you will need to make sure your computer has a mini PCI slot to accommodate this type of card, and then you will need to either remove the keyboard or small panel on the bottom, but once fitted its totally unobtrusive.

The USB wireless type or dongle is perhaps the most common as its just a case on installing its software plugging in the dongle and you are pretty much ready to go The big advantage of this type of network card is the ease of installation, but on the downside it means you will need to remove it if you ever travel and they do have a habit of getting knocked if your limited by your USB ports, this type of network card is suitable for desktop and laptop computers, just make sure your computer has USB type 2 ports or you might find it too slow.

For desktop computers a PCI card is a good choice, all we need to do is install the software, shutdown the computer remove the case, fit the card In a spare PCI port, put the case back on, power on the computer, it will then recognize the new hardware and automatically install the drivers for it and after a minute or so thats it all installed.

The final type of wireless card is the PCMCIA type, just about every laptop has a PCMCIA port or 2, which in 99.9% of laptops is unused (PCMCIA ports are the long thin horizontal ports usually in the side of a laptop) so if your short on USB ports or your computer only has USB type 1 then this would be a good choice for you as these ports are usually redundant.

There is now a real abundance of wireless network cards on the market and as such this has really pushed down prices, decent cards can now be picked up for less than 20 pounds, when I mention decent I mean a card using the faster 802.11g and not the much slower 802.11b

Installing
Most wireless network card require you to install the software before the card, as this not only provides Windows ready with the cards drivers, but also many wireless cards come with their own proprietary software application too. Make sure you read the cards installation guide to confirm this. Fitting the card and installing the software may only install the drive, and it can be the wrong driver causing the card to malfunction.

Now your ready to connect, you should see a pop-up at the bottom right of the screen when a wireless network is in range of the card, click on the pop-up and you'll be able enter your pass key (if you have one set ) to connect to your wireless network.

Notes
Make sure you only use wireless networks you can trust, in other words if you need to connect to an unknown wireless network be very careful if you need to provide any credit card information for anything. On the other end of the scale make sure your router is secure or you could have people connecting to your wireless network, which in itself does not sound too much of a problem, but if malicious they may try to administer your router connect to your computer use your computer internet bandwidth slowing it down for you, or browse illicit material. Luckily though securing a wifi network is not hard.

Its imperative to make sure any wireless connections are secure, check out more articles on Wireless security, plus much more at So please make sure any wireless connections are secure, feel free to checkout more on Wireless security, plus all of our other articles at computer-adviser.com