Just ordered - 5/28

Just ordered a few minutes ago and have an ESD of June 5th. Can't wait to see if this holds true cause I am very excited about my first laptop.

 

God Speed to your order. Which Nivida did you get?

 

128 MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400 - this means absolutely nothing to me since I know squat about the latest and greatest. Hopefully this is OK?

How can you tell if you have a WXGA or a WXGA+ ?

 

If you don't plan on gaming, it'll be fine.

The 8600 is a good bit better, but its still an older mid-range card.

 

The 8400 is capable of gaming DX9 style engines pretty well. I wouldnt except crysis to play all that well, maybe 800x600. Games like WoW should run on high on reasonable resolutions.


I have the LED Screen.

 

They have good build times for inspirons...
Wish they'd step up the build time for the XPS line...

 

That is good to know. We desperately need a new computer in our house. Now to go find out more about hooking up a network with wireless. The desktop is on a cable modem. Off to research some more....

 

Just be sure it's secured/encrypted...
I'd say WEP 128 bit...but I'm not an expert...or anything close to an expert...

 

Oh, definitely. My neighbor's don't secure theirs and everyone else uses it!!

 

Before our neighbors left we just unhooked our router and used the stright line for the desktop and the laptops and Wii used the neighbors Wi-fi. It was 15mbit Roadrunner, they never even noticed.

 

I just started securing my Wifi. I figured no one would use it...but then I use other peoples Wifi all the time...so I figured I should secure it.

I don't mind sharing...but people are sketchy. I don't want people looking at crap that will put me in jail. If they would just check email, some web surfing, etc...that'd be fine.

 

I just called the Dell Support # to find out the status; the laptop is still in production. Sigh...

 

Man...those inspirons go through fast..
My DOP was 9 days before yours...
My ESD is only one before yours...

 

I don't think I would have the patience for that. I am checking several times each day. DH says he is throwing a going away party when this finally comes since he knows he won't see me for a good long while.

 

I check pretty much hourly but the last time I checked was 3:30...
and yeah...I'm having trouble lol...but it should hit boxing soon (today or monday) or it will be ... ... ... delayed :/

 

I would not use WEP if I were you. I would use the latest encryption standard available on the device, which, if it is updated, would be WPA or WPA2. WEP as protection (meaning any key length) has been proven to be easily broken because it uses weak encryption and authentication procedures. WPA, the 802.11i predraft, is much more secure than WEP. WPA provides a secure way of associating with the AP and uses TKIP, an algorithm that is breakable but not if the key length is exceedingly long. Statistical analysis proves that it would take over a year to break your WPA key, so if you change it at least once a year, you will be safe. WPA2, the official 802.11i, is the most secure and least vulnerable to attack. The ONLY known way to break WPA2 is through guess-and-check. If you had the maximum key length with maximum key strength (random characters, etc.), it would be almost close to impossible to break the encryption. It also uses the AES encryption standard that is used by the US government to secure sensitive data, so you can be sure that the foundation on which WPA2 is built on is absolutely secure. Just my two cents...

 

Agreed. Use WPA2-AES to secure your wireless network. This, combined with MAC filleting and the most recent firmware available for your router, should provide adequate security. WEP is NOT secure. Not to mention that WEP won't work with Wi-Fi N speeds. WPA2 is a requirement.

Remember to change the default Admin password and you may also want to change the default channel if there are several other Wi-Fi networks in your area. Choose a WPA2 pass phrase with both numerical, alphabetical and symbol values. Change it every 2-3 months (ya, I'm obsessive hehe)

 

WEP keeps peoples Wiis and laptops from automatically connecting to your Wifi, if your browsing senstive company material, or think someones in a van outside trying to see what you're Doing, then you a 128b WKA-TKIP password, and make it really long..

Most WEPs can be cracked in a couple hours by a brute force guessing program.

 

My thoughts on 128 WEP where something along the lines of "Look, it's your home wireless network. WEP acts as a deterrent and only someone who really wants to spend the time cracking it will get on..."

Now if you actually do work with secret datas, or you're just really f*cking paranoid, for gods sake don't use WEP.

 

I made my SSID 30 charactors long and turned its broadcast off also. So goodluck even finding my Wifi :-D

 

Ours is on broadcast, but for some reason you can't just connect to it from the wireless manager (the default one in Vista, XP, and Ubuntu all don't work)...
You have to add the network manually...

It's not something we did on purpose...and it's kind of annoying lol.

 

Are you saying you turned off the SSID Broadcast function? Lol. I can still find your AP with NetStumbler.