Well, my Dell 600m came yesterday at 6:15 pm. Very nice laptop. Lots of setting up to do but I ran it on batteries with Wi-Fi for over 3 hrs. and still had time left. Looks like this Centrino stuff has merit.

Speaking of Wi-Fi, I started encountering disconnects on my desktop PC connected to my WET11 wireless bridge. This had been a reliable network but as of today it started going wacky. It would connect for a few minutes and then the lights for both the WLAN and the LAN would go out and then I'd have to unplug the power and the cycle would begin again. This was really puzzling. I started to think that introducing the Dell with it's Intel Pro Wireless was causing some interference but even when I turned off the Dell the problems persisted. Much head scratching on this one. I fiddled around with the settings on my SMC WAP - changing the default channel, etc. Nothing seemed to work. I googled the net but didn't turn up anything definitive. I finally gave up and went out and bought an SMC Wireless USB adapter. This installed in minutes and is working great so far.

The even more curious thing is that while looking at all this I started to notice that there was more than one access point showing up in my area! This is quite a surprise since I am in a residential court and was not expecting to see this. After further study I have definitely confirmed the presence of a "rogue" AP that has an SSID of "Speedstream". I can actually connect to it but it doesn't seem to serve DHCP so I can't log onto the Net. I am now wondering if this is the cause of the WET11 going south? Both APs are using channel 11. Even more interesting is where is this AP located? I installed NetStumbler which picked up this AP but since I don't have a GPS unit I can't pinpoint its location.

This is a very curious turn of events.