Practical Technology

A friend recently asked me what kind of Wi-Fi security his small business should be using. He was going to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) because “everyone supports it.” No! Oh please no! WEP’s been broken since 2001. Heck, there are even apps to break WEP Wi-Fi security. Mind you, if you’re fool enough to [...]

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It was the best of devices; it was the worst of devices. When I first agreed to write about a week working with nothing but a Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, I knew I was asking for trouble. Although I already knew and liked its Chrome Web-browser-based Linux operating system, ChromeOS, I also know how I [...]

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Make no mistake about it. I like my Samsung Series 5 Chromebook a lot. I think it will become a major challenge to Windows on light-duty business desktops… eventually. You see right now, as I’m well into week two with my Chromebook, I’m finding holes that need to be filled before I can see many [...]

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It used to be so easy. You either connected with Wi-Fi, or you looked for a place to plug in an Ethernet cable. That was then. This is now. Today, your laptop, netbook, smartphone, or tablet may give you as many as four different wireless choices. What’s a user to do? Let’s take a look [...]

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In the wake of the revelation that there’s a huge security hole in Android’s Wi-Fi communications with Google applications, Google told me and other journalists on May 18th that, “Today we’re starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data [...]

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