Airport & Mac Wireless Networks for Dummies

Even though the Apple Airport choice is not the cheapest choice, it is the easiest to set up ... but like most people, you are worried about leaving any holes for your neighbors or the guy in a car on the street to ride your bandwidth or worse. "AirPort and Mac Wireless Networks For Dummies" covers nearly ever setup choice in not only helping you get set up but also what each of the security choices (yes, no, WEP, Multicast, etc, etc ..) means and why or why not to choose that choice. It's written (as all the Dummies books) by a "normal" person for "normal" people. The Apple Mac setup wizard (unlike Pc ones) included with your purchase of the Airport is actually useful but there are some extra choices in the menus that are explained in greater detail and much clearer here. There are also simple instructions for those who want to add a router and share a USB printer. And how to extend the distance of your Airport with additional airports ... and several great chapters explaining the difference between the regular Airport, the Airport Express and how to set it up to stream music or when you go out on the road. This book explains exactly what it promises and sets out step by step so everything is crystal clear. It's detailed without giving you too much info and never with jargon that's confusing. After you get your Airport, buy this book. Your setup will take 15 minutes but you will sleep soundly knowing all your bases are covered.

I love For Dummies books. A good while ago (when the earth's crust was still cooling and dinosaur's had just begun their reign), I started reading books in the For Dummies series to help me with Unix and Microsoft's DOS. I haven't really ever needed a Dummies book for any Mac related experience. But I was offered the chance to review this guide, Airport & Mac Wireless Networks for Dummies, and I jumped at the chance, primarily since I was a bit nervous to check if I'd set up my own home wireless network optimally. I knew that I'd gotten it "right" since it worked, but after sitting through our local Apple User group's guest lecturer speak about the horrors which awaited the foolishly unsecured network, I decided to check "just in case." So allow me to let you know that I have a Mac Powerbook G4, and I purchased an Airport Extreme to shift from wired service with DSL to wireless networking in my apartment. And it worked great. I love wireless networking ... it just seems such a normal extension of my laptop experience. I have read For Dummies books previously, so I initially scanned the Cheat Sheet found immediately inside the book's front cover (which summarized well the experience I was about to have.) Next I checked the Contents at a Glance section. This simple overview helped me confirm that I didn't need to read the book front-to-back in order, so instead, I picked and chose my interest areas (as recommended by the author, Mr. Michael Cohen.) I found Part V the most use, specifically the series of "Tens" in chapters 12 through 15. Overall, and in keeping with my initial concern about the security of my own network, I found Mr. Cohen's summary of Ten Wireless Security Measures to be the best for me. If any problem might be found with this book, it would be found in whether the reader "needs" the book. Simply put, Apple does such a good job with both the Airport Set-up and Administration applications, I didn't need the book to get by. But, having the book is a good value to me, since instead I can use it as a reference to check what I thought I knew and to learn much more than I knew existed about the world of Wireless Networks. I liked Mr. Cohen's use of humor and personal experience in expressing the concepts in each of the chapters. As dessert to the main course of this book, Mr. Rich Tenant's "The 5th Wave" cartoons illustrate the opening page of each Part of the book. These humorous cartoons were great too!