I find it highly unlikely that hardware that was near-new three years ago would not support WPA. WPA came out before 2004 (I wrote software that used WPA on Windows CE devices back in 2002, for example), and even back then a lot of existing hardware was able to have new firmware flashed onto it to add WPA support. Before going and buying new hardware, I’d try to make WPA work with what you’ve got.
However, what I’ve seen on many people’s work laptops that causes problems is that many businesses (especially non-tech-related businesses) standardized on Windows 2000 and didn’t upgrade to XP for a long time. Windows 2000 did not have very comprehensive support for wireless networking, and what was there didn’t support WPA. So people with Windows 2000 were forced to use the rather hit-or-miss software that came with their hardware to try to configure WPA, and that’s a pain in the butt. If that’s your situation, the Geek Squad guy probably either didn’t know how to do it or didn’t want to get into it.
That is really pretty simple. You buy an ethernet cable ($10-$15, or probably $24.95-$39.95 if you go to Best Buy), plug it into your ‘modem’ (probably actually a router or gateway), and plug the other end into your work laptop. Then it might be recognized automatically, or you may need to adjust some software permissions. That should be your total cost, and it should connect at full speed.
You’ll be limited in using your work laptop at the end of that cable, but that can up to 100m (~325 ft), which will handle most houses.
This is true if the device is running on USB 1.1, which has a maximum transfer speed of 12 Mbit/s, which is lower than the commonly used 802.11g standard of 54 MBit/s. Now, if the device is running USB 2.0, it can run at 480 MBit/s, and can run just as fast as an installed PCI card.
Getting 48mbps throughput out of a 54mbps connection is extremely good, btw. The quoted speeds are not only the theoretical maximum rates, but also the signaling rates, not the rate you can actually send data. Real world numbers for “54mbps” are typically less than 20mbps.
Is it worth it to mention that 20 or 48 or 54 or even 11 mbps is very very much slower than the internet connection you have, unless you’ve got FIOS or similar. So unless you’re file sharing a zillion things between computers (and if I read the thread correctly, I think you aren’t file sharing at all), the wifi speed is pretty much irrelevant.
The overall spirit of what you say is correct, however you made a blunder in saying
“20 or 48 or 54 or even 11 mbps is very very much slower than the internet connection you have.” These bitrates are likely higher than that of the internet connection. I think you just misspoke and actually meant to say the reverse of what you ended up typing.
Yeah, I did. My bad. Any wireless solution is faster than almost any consumer internet connection. So if all you’re doing is web surfing, the speed of the wireless network isn’t really pertinent.
