Broadband - additional computers

hjb123

The thing is we dont really want to move as we were with Freeserve orginally and have freeserve email addresses and two of these are for businesses - we are on a farm and holiday cottage so the email address change may be alot of hassle?

Browntoa

worse case you could drop those to a "pay as you go" account and dial in once every 60 days to keep them alive. you can still pick emails from those accounts up over the broadband

You could get a Gmail account (from Google, I can send you an invite as they are free, just send me a private message) and start to include that on all your paperwork and emails.

You could also set up a simple website like ourfarmsite.co.uk and this allows you to have [EMAIL="sales@myfarmsite.co.uk"]sales@myfarmsite.co.uk[/EMAIL] , john@myfarmsite etc and you in reality just point that at any email address that you like !!! then if you ever change your private email the farm one stays the same regardless

This means that you are then in future always independent of your ISP for email

amcluesent

>in future always independent of your ISP for email<

IMHO, it also looks a lot more professional for a business. I'd be thinking twice about engaging with someone at "company@aol.com" and the like.

DonnyDave

hjb123 wrote:

The thing is we dont really want to move as we were with Freeserve orginally and have freeserve email addresses and two of these are for businesses - we are on a farm and holiday cottage so the email address change may be alot of hassle?

For personal use I registered a couple of .uk addresses with 1&1 Internet. It's £1.99 exc VAT per year for a .uk address. Look around, they're like washing powder; there's loads of companies out there that will register domains (addresses) for you.

You don't have to host a website to have one; you can use it for e-mail only. You can also just get it to forward e-mails to your existing Freeserve account. Should you change provider, you can then change it so it goes to your new account.

Of course, it might be worth keeping the Freeserve address for now as people will have it. That doesn't stop you getting and promoting another one; people can still e-mail both addresses.

As far as internet provider goes, if you move away from Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange, you can still keep your FS address by dialling up every 90 days. Best to put it in your diary and mark it less than 90 days.

Once you have broadband, you connect all PCs using that. There's no point having one using the broadband and one using dial-up from another provider. That doesn't stop any computer being setup to dial-up to any other ISP you want. So, providing you have a normal 56k modem in your computer, you can make a connection for Freeserve, as well as connecting to broadband.

I suggest that you get a router rather than the 'free' one from Orange, as others say it is locked to them. That way you can change providers and all you need do its change your username and password in the router.

The laptop will be wireless enabled and your desktop should have a network card in, so all you need is a wireless router. The router will have a network socket and lead to connect it to your desktop PC. So only your laptop will need the wireless part.

hjb123

So if my laptop isnt wireless enabled and neither is the main pc would I be able to connect my laptop at a different telephone socket in the house and still be able to connect to broadband that way ?

DonnyDave

hjb123 wrote:

So if my laptop isnt wireless enabled and neither is the main pc would I be able to connect my laptop at a different telephone socket in the house and still be able to connect to broadband that way ?

No, you can't plug different computers into different phone sockets. That's why you need a router; a 'box' that plugs into the phone line and allows you to connect several computers to the net.

As far as getting a laptop that is not wireless enabled; you would have to go out of your way to find one as most have wireless capabilities built in.

And your desktop PC does not need to be wireless enabled because it will most probably have a [wired] network card in. Does it have an icon by the clock with two monitors and a red X?

See [post=2317420]this post[/post].

hjb123

Hi,

The laptop I was looking at - but wont be getting one yet - doesnt look to be wireless enabled as I was looking at a refurbished one.

Yeah there is an icon by the clock with 2 monitors that flash whenever we are on the internet.

DonnyDave

hjb123 wrote:

Yeah there is an icon by the clock with 2 monitors that flash whenever we are on the internet.

That's for your current connection and not the one I'm referring to.

Do you have another one with a red cross that, when you hover the mousepointer over, it says that the network (LAN) cable is unplugged, like this one:


What make/model PC do you have?

albertross_2

You can buy a wireless usb adapter for the laptop if it has a usb port, or a PCMCIA card if it has pcmcia. What model are you looking at? Will it have XP on it?

hjb123

DonnyDave wrote:

That's for your current connection and not the one I'm referring to.

Do you have another one with a red cross that, when you hover the mousepointer over, it says that the network (LAN) cable is unplugged, like this one:


What make/model PC do you have?

Not got another icon - I couldnt see that icon but the only icons I have by the clock are the volume, a couple of ones for our printer, spybot, zone alarm, msn messenger, icon showing internet on and an internet one showing the modem is connected - speedtouch status monitor

Our computer Windows 98SE, not sure what pentium it is!