PCTips Box

Most notebook batteries are lithium ion. Lithium ion batteries can slowly lose their capacity to hold a charge. But they hold their charge better over some time compared to other rechargeables like nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride.

Shut Down (or Hibernate) instead of Stand By. There are things you can do to extend the charge of your batteries when you’re using your notebook on battery power. You should shut down completely instead of putting computer on Stand By mode to preserve your battery power. The hibernate feature saves you computer’s state in your hard drive but completely shuts down the computer. (more…)

Every time your laptop connects to a Wi-Fi hot spot, whether it’s in your home or down at the coffee shop, it logs the name of the access point that you connected to in the Windows Preferred Network settings. If you accidentally (or maybe even deliberately) connect to your neighbor’s access point, and then find yourself reconnecting again despite your efforts not to, you need to bump that listing down in your connection list and move your router to the top.

To do this, click Start and select Connect To, then Wireless Network Connection. On the window that opens, click on the Properties button on the lower left, then the Wireless Networks tab at the top. (more…)

At TechEd, as you might imagine, there is a lot of wireless noise. There is the conference wi-fi, but there are also a bunch of ad-hoc or computer to computer networks with remarkably similar names. In the wireless list infrastructure and ad-hoc networks have different icons.

You have to question the motives of people trying to fists for wi-fi users like that. while I know better than to go connecting to ad-hoc networks willy nilly, I wanted to remove the risk of accidentally connecting to one with the same name. (more…)

If you take your Wi-Fi enabled laptop with you on your travels then, like me, you are always on the lookout for a free Hotspot hook-up when hanging around at airports, hotels or cafes. If you do your homework and visit sites like free-hotspot. Before you go you should be able to find one. However, be on your guard if you are casually trawling for a free connection, you could be opening up your PC and its contents to a hacker.

Here’s how it works. A crook with a Wi-Fi laptop sets up shop by hanging around a legitimate hotspot. Their PC is logged on to the web and set up for Internet Connection Sharing. Along comes our weary traveller and the Wi-Fi monitor on their PC flags up the bogus connection as open and available. They think it is Christmas, click on it to log on and bingo, the two PCs are linked by an ‘ad hoc’ or peer-to-peer connection and the data on the victim’s laptop is exposed.
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Every time your laptop connects to a Wi-Fi hot spot, whether it’s in your home or down at the coffee shop, it logs the name of the access point that you connected to in the Windows Preferred Network settings. If you accidentally (or maybe even deliberately) connect to your neighbor’s access point, and then find yourself reconnecting again despite your efforts not to, you need to bump that listing down in your connection list and move your router to the top.
(more…)

In anticipation of the 802.11n Wi-Fi specification being finalised later this year chipmaker Intel has started shipping ‘Next-Gen Wireless-N chips to laptop makers, including Acer, Gateway and Toshiba. The first products are expected to go on sale in the US in the next few weeks. Key benefits include much faster data transfer rates, better range and lower power consumption, though the increase in speed is not going to be much use until products like 802.11n routers and access points become available, and that’s unlikely to happen until the Autumn. In the meantime Wireless-N equipped laptops will still be able to connect to existing 802.11b and 11g networks