Comments on: Connecting the home networking dots

There's more to home networking than entertainment, but turning the potential into reality remains a major challenge.
Photos: Hooked-up home

Home Networking - not ready for prime time

There have to be 100,000's of Larry's across the country, I am one of them. I have 2 neighbors right now I am helping on home networking add that to the other 5 over the last 2 yrs.

They all end up saying, "how is the typical home owner supposed to do this?" these are college educated upper middle class folks - they could shell out the $100/hr for computer fix it van to come out but they have heard it is simple and have gotten stuck. As we all know it is not plug a phone into a jack and go type of world. They all hear about WI-FI and think that should be simple - and find out yeaks - how come I am getting 3 wi-fi networks in my house when I only have 1.

Been a long time since I used Mac's - back then they seemed to have figured out plug-n-play networks. If it is still true then I would love to tell people - buy a MAC, dump AOL-DSL and your set. But that is not what it should take (still dump AOL-DSL however - a proprietary snake-pit).

And of course what makes it more interesting now after Christmas are the kids that want to do internet gaming on X-box or PS-2. I thought all these teenagers were supposed to be computer geeks?

I dont have a solution, just facts that you still need someone to setup a home network and it should not take a $100/hr tech person - it should be $200 and then I would quite my day job! HA!

That's a pretty big market...

A billion wireless routers shipped last year? At that rate every
person on the planet will have one in another five years. What
are we going to do with them all? Or is there some hyping going
on here?

networking NOT on windows...

just buy a few macs, they network just fine with no problems at
all. i don't see what all the fuss is about :-D Ok ok, I do. I tried
to network my xp laptop to my xp desktop a year ago and it was
impossible, never worked right. Now with my ibook and
powermac, I haven't had a problem yet. Just setup a WDS
throughout my whole house, networked my printer and even
have a network based KVM piece of free-ware that...all in about
30 min. try that on xp.

Same here

I use an Apple AirPort Extreme base station to access a pinter
and broadband Internet anywhere in my home from my iBook
G4. As soon as I can afford it I'll put an AirPort Express behind
my entertainment centre to stream music direct to the Hi-Fi
from iTunes. Also on my wish list:
A Blue Tooth phone so that I only need to update my Address
Book once.
And a WiFi enabled PDA to get e-mails on the road from
hotspots.

I'm also pondering a Mac mini as a kind of D.I.Y. Media Centre
device, but that's beyond the scope of the average user.

The most tedious part was torturing my PC into joining the
network. Now I have everything I need on the iBook I never
power up the PC anymore. It'd be put to greater as a Linux file
server, if only I had somewhere to put it where I wouln't hear it's
incessent fan noise.

[catchall]

ya right

Right, 2 clicks on the PC is ugly and complex. 2 clicks on the Mac is intuitive.
Making a home network with Windows boxes is easy, kids. Right click what you want to share, choose 'sharing'. A wizard walks you right through it.
That having been said, regardless of what machine you build you home network out of, folks need to understand what they are sharing and to who. That little wireless router will be happy to share your files, as well as your connection, with your neighbors.