On the Road Wireless Access.

I have an Inspiron B130 laptop that I shortly plan to take on its maiden journey outsde the home. It has both the wireless and the ethenet cards. So far I have only used the wireless access and it is configured for my router. The ethernet card has not been cinfigured fior anything. I have olso used some stray wireless network that I occasionally get in my home. I would very much like to have some advice on the following:

Wireless access - I assume that this will be picked up automatically in airports, hotels, etc. The computer is secured for router access, but I have no clue how to secure it for use on public sites. Can it in fact be done?.

Ethernet access - I will have DSL ethernet access at my daughters, and possibly in some hotels. How should I configure the ethernet card?. Separately for each access point?. I know how to use ipconfig and in fact have little program that does it for me. My doughter has a Mac laptop, will settings be any different for it?.

Any other matters I should look out for?.

I will be grateful for your comments.

Inspiron B130; 1.45 MHz Celeron M; 512 RAM; Windows XP/SP2;
Dell wireless 1470 Dual Band WLAN Mini PCI Card; Broadcom 440x10/100 Integrated Controller; Broadband Connection Microsoft Wireless Base Station.

Wireless access- Yes, indeed, by default windows has an option called "Ad-hoc" which automatically signs into a wireless point. You should disable this before venturing outside the home. See this link which also tells you some very important things to do: http://mobileoffice.about.com/cs/fin...usehotspot.htm

Also, you probably should not use any unsecured webpage login or such in a public hotspot, meaning that you should not log into an unsecured email account, bank account, etc... because people that have packet sniffers can look at everybody's traffic on the hotspot. For that reason, you should use a VPN solution such as Hamachi or Open VPN to remote control or even use something like LogMeIn (because it is free) to remotely control your desktop at home to surf the net. Following all of these practices can help keep you safe at a hotspot

Ethernet Access- If the ethernet card is enabled, which it should be by default, then it should not be any problem configuring because Windows does it for you! With DSL you should just be able to plug it in and go, even with MAC (although I have never set up a Mac, so you may need a second opinion).

Signal access may be automatic is hotels and airports and the like, but you may have to pay for access. The biggest thing you can do to secure while wireless is to disable File & Print Sharing.
Ethernet access will be done via DHCP when using a wired connection.

Windows XP SP2 is already in a secure configuration in terms of not blindly joining wireless networks -- it won't connect until you click on the wireless icon in the tray and choose a network.

"Ad-hoc" just refers to wireless networks between two PCs that don't use an access point.

Using a firewall is the main thing (even the Windows Firewall will do, but put it in No Exceptions mode), as well as not sending anything sensitive unencrypted. That typically includes checking your ISP mail account -- regular POP3 and IMAP often don't use any form of password encryption.

Thank you all for your help. Your advice and references got me squared away on what I have to do.
I have a full battery of security software on my laptop: XP firewall on; Outback firewall; NOD32 AV; Spyware Blaster; SpyBot S & D; AdAware. I run all these regularly, either automatically or manually.

Thank you for your help.

One firewall is plenty and two can be counter productive.

On the Road. A funny story. No wireless connection - a message to the effect that the "access to the server was blocked - error 500. For explanation (...Cure?) see Microsoft Knowledge base No so and so at microsoft.com" Now that is a worthy new challenge to all the VirtualDr experts: how to get a web page without the internet access.
Since the hotel also has an etherrnet access, they even supplied the cable, no problem connecting to the internet that way. I will follow up the wireless problem, if any when I get to my destination in California where I will stay for a week.
As to the two firewalls jmwills you have a good point, as any communication with the firewall has so far been through Outpost only. Windows firewall does not seem to interfere or really do anything. I am just tired of putting up with warning baloons which I don't want to switch off because most of the warnings are usefull.
Thank you all for your help.

Any number of sites can tell you how to disable those ballons.
The Windows firewall in an inbound firewall only meaning that if you mistakenly downloaded something and started the service the firewall would more often than not allow the program to run.