LAUG 2.0 News

A podcast from the February meeting of the Lawrence Apple Users Group. This month’s topic included a presentation on Wireless Networking and the Mac hosted by LAUG’s own Dave Greenbaum.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news and commercials and then dived into a discussion about the best routers and networking setups for group members as well as how to secure your wireless access point. Over half of members present at the meeting had never used wireless networking which helped to steer the discussion and questions.

The door prizes for this month’s meeting included Podcasting and Blogging with Garageband and iWeb and Wireless Starter Kit both from Peachpit, as well as Mac User’s Guide to Living Wirelessly courtesy of Course Technology PTR.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

 

 Enhanced Podcast [93:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (6)

While wireless connectivity should be “plug and play,” in reality there are choices, compromises, and caveats when using wireless devices. The author effectively navigates the reader through the wonder world of wireless connectivity and while warning us of problems, does not make the process overly complex.

By far, this is the most hands on and effective book on wireless networking I have read! The book was very logically organized by first training the reader on all the lingo such as the difference between an Airport Extreme and Airport Express and all the 802.11 alphabet soup. Once establishing that baseline with the reader, Miser then gives the reader all the potential options of how to setup a wireless Mac network and then explains each step with plenty of simple diagrams and pictures. Other books I read on this subject quickly lose the reader with complex and unnecessary options. For example, Miser doesn’t go into detail about “port mapping” which allows you to use create a web server “behind” an airport. If someone needs to set up a webserver, they probably don’t need help setting up a wireless network. This book covers the practical aspects of wireless networking the typical Mac user would face. If someone wanted complex, they’d probably be using a PC!
(more…)