Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 20: Top Ten Sources for More Information
Amazon.com, Shopping.com,
Pricegrabber.com, and more
What? Learn about wireless on a shopping site? Ah, but you can glean a
broad range of information from these sites that will help you in your purchase
and evaluation of wireless technologies. Amazon.com will show you
multiple pictures — usually the front and back — that you can use to see
what sort of LEDs, LCDs, and ports you are getting. The user reviews are
always helpful — we usually read the negative reviews to try to find the
pitfalls and do more research on those using Google.
Amazon.com, Shopping.com, and Pricegrabber.com are great for telling you
what other people are interested in and what’s popular — although what
everyone else is buying is not always a good indicator of quality. All three
sites will help you find out where you can buy the products and who has the
cheapest pricing, although Amazon.com is more focused on selling on
Amazon first and foremost. Shopping.com and Pricegrabber.com are more
intent on linking you to other vendors and are a good resource as you start
comparison shopping.
Wi-Fi Planet, WiFi-Forum, and More
Wi-Fi Planet (www.wi-fiplanet.com/) is a great resource for keeping up with
industry news and getting reviews of access points, client devices, security
tools, and software. Look for the tutorial section, where you can find articles
such as “TiVo and Wi-Fi — Imperfect Together” and “Used Routers Can Create
Whole New Problems.”
One of the more interactive parts of Wi-Fi Planet is its forum, where you can
ask questions to the collective readership and get answers. (You can ask a
question, and the system e-mails you with any responses — very nice.) The
forum has General, Security, Troubleshooting, Interoperability, Standards,
Hardware, Applications, VoIP, and WiMAX sections. The discussions are
tolerant of beginners, but can get quite sophisticated in their responses. All
in all, it’s a great site for information. (Wi-Fi Planet also has RSS feeds!)
Another forum that tends to get a lot of traffic is the WiFi-Forum (www.wififorum.com),
which runs out of London and has a more international clientele.
The Wi-Fi Net News site (www.wifinetnews.com/) is a great site for finding out
what’s going on in the wireless world. You may have heard about Weblogs, or
blogs: They’re link-running, rambling commentaries that people keep online
about topics near and dear to their hearts.
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