For as little as $99 you can create a wireless network in your own home.  Having a wireless network allows you to automatically backup your documents, work in different rooms of your home, and share one printer among several computers.  Janice discussed the types of equipment needed and walked us through the security and software setup needed.

All Macs in recent years come with built in Airport cards  that allow them to connect to a wireless network.  With the purchase of a $99 Airport Express base station that you plug into a wall outlet, you can not only have several Macs using the internet at the same time, but you can also play your iTunes music through your home stereo system.  With a larger and more powerful Airport Extreme base station ($199),  you can boost the speed of your downloads and increase the range of the wireless signal. 

While wide variety of wireless routers are on the market today, it is important to know that all of the Apple wireless routers are designed to use the newest and most effective 802.11n transmission standards.  "N" provides the widest range and the fastest downloads.

Security is an important issue on wireless networks and Apple has incorporated the best security on the market so you don't have to worry about unwanted users on your home network system. 

  Timecapsule  is a wireless networking base station with a built-in harddrive that takes advantage of Leopard's Time Machine feature for automatic backup of all your OSX 10.5 Macs wirelessly.  It comes in two sizes, 500GigaBytes ($329) and 1 Terrabyte ($529).  

Printer sharing is built-in with all of the products mentioned above, so families with more than one computer can all use the same printer over the wireless network. 

.Mac, a feature offered by Apple allows users to stay in touch with their  home computer from anywhere in the world, while offering a pocketful of productivity tools at the same time:

• Web Gallery,  a place to share photos and providing password protection
  
• iChat, full-screen video conferencing with friends and relatives... without long distance charges.
  
• iWeb,  allows simple website hosting
  
• iDisk, 10 GigaBytes of on-line storage 
  
• Back to my Mac, gives you access to and control of your home Mac from another Mac... from anywhere!
  
• iCards, provides a library many professional looking postcards that can be sent via email.
  
• iSync,  for those who have multiple Macs, keep your bookmarks, calendars, widgets, and other things the same on all
  
• Learning Central, lots of tutorials and Mac insights that are easy to use and easy to understand
  

Janice also pointed out that Best Buy and Future Shop have wireless networks that anyone can access.  So if you need to access the internet while shopping, then stop by. 

This month's door prize was a CD by Aladdin Systems containing 10 games for OSX, generously provided by Ray Sleeva of ManTek Services.   The lucky winner this month was Paul B.

For an overview of the multitude of excellent widgets available form Apple, follow this link to Dashboard Widgets.  The MUGS web page (Members Only section) also has links to a bunch of widget libraries that make it easy to preview and download your favourites.

Hamish demonstrated several widgets he downloaded.  Among them were:  (click on widgets below to get downloads)

CocoAspell, a free downloadable  spell checker was also discussed.  The advantage of CocoAspell is that it can be set to allow British spellings (colour, neighbour, etc.)