Re: Ask EU numpty-level computer/internet

Kate Brown wrote:
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, Sebastian Lisken wrote
Jane Vernon <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Can anyrat reassure me that a £20 USB wireless dongle would be all our
friend would need to buy to be able to connect her Freecycle computer to
the internet?

If she finds the right thing to connect to - i.e. some WiFi access
point - then in theory that should indeed be all she needs. However ...

She will probably be using Windows 98.

I would strongly advise against that. (I know John Gilliver would not
but that doesn't change my opinion.) Neither Windows 98 nor the
browser versions you can still get for 98 these days are recent
enough. She'd be too vulnerable - sitting behind a router would
protect her from the kind of attacks that involve people connecting
from outside while you basically do nothing. But there are other
things you can catch by visiting a malicious website.

Without trying to evangelise, if it is to be that computer I would
investigate if there is a Linux distribution that could be run on it,
but that would need to be reasonably modern too (if only for the sake
of user friendliness) and I'd suspect that such a Linux version would
also be too much for this computer.


Can you tell us anything more about the computer? Make, RAM, processor, that sort of stuff? Is it a tower, where you might be able to slot new things in? Or a laptop (it might have needed a dock to be connected, some old Toshibas were like that)?

It's a tower. More accurately, it will be a tower once the hard drive from one computer is fitted to the rest of the bits from another. This may explain why it hasn't got all the bits you are saying would be expected. She only has Windows 98 to install, AFAIK.

If it's a Windows 98 one it's very
odd that it hasn't even got a modem/telephone socket. But if you can tell us what it is, one of the supertechies round here will undoubtedly tell you how to get it to work.

Then she'll need, besides the dongle, a router-modem for her own connection, or a next-door pal who will let her piggyback on their wireless network.

Butbutbut - TalkTalk, who I asked, say they supply the wireless router. Other companies seem to do the same. I don't really understand why she would need an additional connection.

--
Jane
The potter in the purple socks
email jane at cloth and clay dot co dot uk
http://twitter.com/purplepotter for Twitter and http://clothandclay.blogspot.com/ for blog

http://www.clothandclay.co.uk/umra/cookbook.htm for recipes supplied by umrats
.

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