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Over the past 12 days we’ve recommended 12 different retailers to you for Christmas present ideas.  As we are at the end of it all we thought it would be a good idea for us to do a quick review of who the 12 retailers were.

1. Apple
2. 123-Reg
3. Dell
4. Amazon
5. AVG
6. Misco
7. CD WOW
8. Dabs
9. HMV
10. PC World
11. The Carphone Warehouse
12. I Want One Of Those

Which retailers have you used?  Who is your favourite retailer?

Ok, so for the whole of December we thought we would scrap the quick tips and instead post amusing YouTube videos that had some link to computers! So to start us off we have a couple of videos for PC verses Mac…PC’s response to the Mac Ad’s earlier this year!

Enjoy!

Over the next 12 days we are going to have a retailer of the day.  For each retailer we’ll give you a quick idea of what they sell and why we think that they are worth checking out for Christmas ideas!  Our first retailer is Apple.

Apple are probably best known for their iPods, iPhones and Macs.  iPods are more than likely to be a very popular product to have this Christmas.  A bonus from buying from Apple is that you can personalise your products (e.g. have your name engraved into the iPod).

They manufacture great products for everyone!

A slightly different tip this week..it is for those of you looking at some of the Apple hardware! No matter if you are interested in the latest ipod touch, imac or xserve Mac Rumors is a great site for all the gossip on what is happening in the world of Apple!

The best and in my mind the most useful page on the site is the Buyers Guide, it advises you when updates to Apple products are due for release and also has posts about what the updates are likely to be. Apple tend to change their products at regular intervals so it isn’t to hard to suss out when a new update is due and that it is not wise to buy just before they release that update! So check out the MacRumors Buyers Guide for all the news from Apple including the iPhone

Maybe we should have had this as site of the month one time..

In Step 1 we looked at the equipment you require, in Step 2 we are looking at Security, this is something I often find people don’t bother with! Not Good! If you don’t secure your network you are risking the following:

• People logging onto your broadband connection and using up all your bandwidth,
• Accessing inappropriate sites over your connection.
• Hackers looking at all you are doing…like buying that nice new DVD from Amazon…ooo Credit Card Details being stolen.
• Ok, you get the picture!

To set this up it generally requires logging into the Wireless Router / Access Point with an address that probably is in the form 192.168.x.x through Internet Explorer, Firefox or your chosen web browser.

Encryption

Then you will have the option of Wireless Security, the two most common forms of Wireless Encryption on home routers are WEP and WPA-PSK.

WPA-PSK is more secure than the WEP encryption, but WEP is better than nothing! The way these encryption keys work is like this:

1. The router has a security key
2. You tell the machine wanting to access the wireless network this security key. This is requested when you try to access a secure network.
3. Then the two devices can talk to each other

(that is the simple explanation anyway )

Basically what this is doing is encrypting the data sent between your laptop and the router so anyone trying to read the data you are sent would need to ‘guess’ the key. If you didn’t have this setup you would be sending the data as plain text! Not good!

Three things to remember when creating your security key:

• If it is easy to remember it is probably easy to guess!
• Don’t use a key or pass-phrase that is associated to you
• The longer the key the hard it is to guess or the longer it will take a computer to crack!

If you need help creating the key check out a former Quick Tip on Security Key Generating.

Mac Address Filtering

Another layer of added security is MAC address filtering. Each network device wired or wireless has a unique ‘address’, usually in the form something like: 00-00-00-00-00. On a router you can implement filtering so you can tell it which MAC addresses you want to access the router and therefore the network and internet. To find the MAC code:

In windows

1. Open up command prompt (Start > Run > cmd > Enter)
2. Type the following: ipconfig /all
3. It will be shown as Physical Address

Specifically how to set these security features up is difficult because each router is different so you should have instructions on how to do this either in a paper manual or on the CD which came with the router / access point.

So there we go, no excuses, you now know to secure your network! The third and final part of this series next week is Extending your network!