As we do these various bike trips I find it is possible to "truck in" a laptop since I will be pulling my bike to all the big trips from now on to save my limited leg & foot & back time instead of consuming it all in doing the 800 miles into and out of the mountains.
Most motorcycle campgrounds have a single public wifi hot spot in the main office area. I however prefer to stay in my cabin and snipe that signal from afar, mainly because I'm too lazy to cart the laptop back & forth and back & forth from the office (plus there may not be a place to set up there if it is full of people watching TV, plus you get asked like 50 times to "lemme check my email, buddy" by everyone who is going thru internet withdrawal).
Here is your $19.99 wifi sniper gimmick.
and here is where you can buy it for $16.99 new if you will look in the extra section for new and used.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BU8LIK/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&m...I am currently using this product as I type this post to connect to a wifi spot that is an easy 250 yards away, I am getting a 3-4 bar 24 mips N signal that is rated
very good by Windows XP at that distance.
Installation can be very simple, jest turn your local wifi in the machine off, then put the disk in the CD (don't run the disk or allow it to auto install as you don't want to have to deal with custom software interfering with your system). Just let the disk be there, all quiet like.
Then plug in the wifi sniper USB cable -- your machine finds an unknown piece of hardware then asks if it can go to the net to find a driver. You tell it "NO, not this time" then it asks if it can go to the CD and get the driver and you agree.
You get a dialog box showing all the drivers on the CD and there sure are a heck of lot of them, aren't they?
Now be careful to scroll around that list to find the one that best represents your system. I used the 32 bit Windows XP driver because that best matches my system, the dead nuts accurate driver as a matter of fact.
Then tell windows to go load the driver and it does and it recognizes the USB device and suddenly you got internet again, much stronger than before.
Now, when you unplug the USB cable the driver becomes inactive and you can turn your internal wifi back on for normal use. BTW, this works great for old laptops that have no wifi at all -- now they do (and it can see a long long way too !!!)
These devices were developed for "war driving" a nefarious tricky type thingamabop that involved riding around in low rider Honda Civic cars with loud exhausts while hacking past people's WEPA keys to get onto their routers.
You as a civilized Savager would rarely would need to do this since you sitting still and can see for like a quarter mile now so you can find a neighbor in that quarter mile circle who hasn't bothered to set his router's WEPA key up when he put the router in a while ago
and his signal is always wide open for public access.
Since he has legally invited "group participation"
it is even legal for you to sign on to his router automatically.
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For $19.99 having the device in your bag of tricks is a good enough thing, as literally it can pull an unblocked uninterrupted (no buildings in the way) signal from a quarter mile away when perfectly aimed.
Plus,
if you are evil you could pull in a free wifi signal from a careless neighbor and not have to pay Time Warner's monthly connection fee any more.