ther investigate when I bought her a new MacBook Pro that still exhibited the problem. No longer able to blame Windows or a cheap laptop, I did a wireless site survey of my house, only to dis- cover that directly in the signal path between the wireless access point (WAP) and my wife's laptop sat, not only the microwave oven, but the cordless telephone base station as well. As soon as I moved the WAP to a different location in the house, her wireless problems ceased. The lesson here is that placement of your WAP matters. Since I'd used the same WAP for years and carefully placed it wherever there was room on my desk, I not only limited her to an old standard, but managed to cause her the most problems possible given the interference sources in my house. In an enterprise environment, this problem would have been avoided by doing a proper wireless site survey. Security Security has always been a big concern with wireless. Even today, with wireless a mature technology, I can walk around any apartment complex with a laptop and probably get onto someone's insecure wireless network. I know people who haven't paid for Internet access in years because their neighbors don't secure their wireless, allowing anyone to steal their bandwidth. While theft of Internet bandwidth is a moral and security con- cern, the bigger worry should be that unfettered wireless access allows strangers into an insecure network. It's one thing to be able to surf the Net for free. It's something else entirely to have access to all the computers on someone else's network. Even wireless security isn't enough. I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in hotels. As soon as I authenticate and gain access to the wireless in the hotel, I see scores of computers advertising themselves and their file shares. People have provided easy access to personal photographs, med- ical and financial records, and even sensitive password lists. Do yourself a favor and turn off the file shares on your laptop when you travel. Ru- mor has it there are plenty of bored nerds 