How to Make a Dialup Connection on Your Laptop Using Windows Vista
Unlike a broadband connection, which is always on, a dialup connection requires you to dial in to your ISP whenever you want to use it. Before you try making a dialup connection, ensure that your laptop [more…]
How to Connect Your Laptop to a Peer-to-Peer Workgroup
For small networking operations, you can connect your laptop to a peer-to-peer network. This includes everything from a home office that has only one other computer to a smaller company that doesn't need [more…]
Configure a Router
Configure your router to make your network complete. You need to configure the router so that it can communicate with your network components. Fortunately, the configuration steps are rather straightforward [more…]
How to Connect Your Laptop to an Unknown SSID in Windows Vista
For security reasons, some wireless networks don’t broadcast their SSIDs. A wireless network not broadcasting its SSID doesn’t show up in your laptop’s list of networks. [more…]
A Typical Computer Networking Setup
Networking doesn't happen without hardware. First comes the networking adapter, hardware required in order to interface the PC with the network. Wire-based networks need wire, obviously. And all networks [more…]
What You Can Do with Remote Desktop
Remote Desktop is a Windows Vista feature that lets you share work between your laptop and desktop computers. When the remote desktop is set up and connected, what you see on your laptop’s screen is actually [more…]
Networking on Your Laptop
The Control Panel sports a few icons to help you get onto a network on your laptop. This includes wired and wireless connections, the Internet, dialup, and other networking options. Windows Vista uses [more…]
Wireless versus Wired Computer Networking
Other than the transmission method (obviously, one network involves wires and the other is wireless), here are the three major differences between a wired network and a wireless network: [more…]
How to Set Up Network Hardware in Your Laptop
In order to network, you need to install a NIC, or network interface card, inside your laptop.
Most laptops sold today come with a NIC standard. You can tell that it’s there by looking for the RJ-45 hole [more…]
How to Add and Remove Your Laptop to and from a Network
Adding and removing your laptop to and from a network is probably the easiest part of using a network.
After the network connection has been made and everything is set up, you can connect your laptop to [more…]
How to Use Real Virtual Network Computing from Your Laptop
A fine company in the U.K., RealVNC, produces a free product that lets you access and use your computer from any other location on the Internet. Yes, again, the product is free. It's easy to install and [more…]
Important PC Networking Terms
Computer networking is all about sharing with others — just like kindergarten. But rather than share crayons or toys, you use a computer network to share resources and communicate information. For a computer [more…]
How to Access the Remote Desktop from Your Laptop
Once your computer is configured to accept a remote desktop connection, you can use another computer on the network — say, your laptop — to access that computer and use it remotely. [more…]
How to Access the Internet from Your Laptop When Traveling
Internet access is available everywhere. If you need to specifically access your own ISP from your laptop while you are traveling, it's preferable to have either a local access number or a toll-free number [more…]
The Bluetooth Wireless Network Standard
Bluetooth isn’t a network standard for full-scale wireless Ethernet networking. Instead, Bluetooth was developed as a specialized wireless technology for short distances. You can use Bluetooth with cell [more…]
Going Public with Wi-Fi Hotspots
The beauty of Wi-Fi networking is its mobility. It gives you the freedom to wander far from home and still have a solid connection to the Internet. You can find Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe, with the [more…]
How to Disable the Original WiFi adapter
If your laptop has built-in WiFi but you add a new adapter that connects through the PC Card adapter or a USB port, you will need to remove or disable Windows drivers for the original unit. You should [more…]
The Different Wireless PC Network Standards
Wireless networking suffers from competition between different standards — some network standards are compatible with others, and some aren’t. And wireless networking has a handful of the most confusing [more…]
AC and Phone line Computer Networking
You can build a network by either using the existing standard AC power wiring (a power line network) or the telephone wiring (a phone line network) in your home. Both these alternative wired networks have [more…]
Connect Peripherals to Your PC
Peripherals are externally hooked up to your computer. Your actual PC, itself, is nothing but the console (or tower). Everything else is considered a peripheral. To do much of anything with a PC, you’ll [more…]
The Network Cables for Your PC
Unless you go totally wireless, you need wires to connect the computers, thus creating the network. You use a cable known as Cat 5, or Category 5, networking cable. One end of the cable plugs into your [more…]
Understanding Dedicated Service Jargon
Dedicated service is telecom service provided through a dedicated circuit that only you have access to, spanning from your physical location to your carrier's network. this option used to be relatively [more…]
How to Disconnect Your Laptop from the Remote Desktop
When you finish your remote desktop session, it’s easy to break the remote connection. Simply close the remote window, or click the X button on the strip across the top of the screen. Then click the OK [more…]
Your Computer’s Network Interface Card
Your PC requires Ethernet networking hardware to connect to the network, specifically a network information card, or NIC. Your NIC may also be called an Ethernet card or a network adapter. The NIC circuitry [more…]
How to Access Your E-mail from an Outside Network Using Your Laptop
If you have a laptop, and you’re visiting friends or relatives that have their own network, it's easy to hook into their network and use your laptop to access your e-mail [more…]
