Yippiwifiwoohoo!!!

At last! .....  
I now have Wi-Fi fixed up at home with a proper secure password - which means that I can now use the laptop as a laptop is supposed to be used - without having any wires or anything plugged in.
I can now bring it ANYWHERE around the house - in the kitchen, bedrooms - into the toilet if I want to! - I can even sit down the end of the garden with my [wireless] comp and be on the internet.  

What's more - anyone else that visits here and has their own comp or tablet or phone, whatever, can do the same.  Just ask me for the password (which I have discreetly encumbered around my person) and away ya go.

Cost me £35 - for a little 2-piece gadget which I got in Asda.  I wasn't specifically looking for it, I only went in to get milk and teabags, and just happened to see this thingy on sale on the shelf.
There are 2 plugs - with two connecting wires, although only one of those wires is really needed (and the unique password comes with the thing).   I plugged one of the plugs into a wall socket. Plug in one of the wires to that, with the other end of the wire being plugged into my router.  Then the other plug gets plugged into any other wall socket and that's it!  I have it plugged into my bedroom at the moment, as that's nearest to the garden.  I (and whoever is with me) can be anywhere within a 300 yard surrounding area and be wirelessly (and securely) connected to the internet.  



Of course there's a double-edged good-cop-bad-cop story involved ... (as is always the case with me anyway) - that never-ending seesaw of life .........    ...  Well, actually, it's not directly connected at all, but it's just the bad-cop end of the seesaw that also cropped up today alongside my good news ...
I somehow managed to banjax the telly in the kitchen, pressed something I shouldn't have I guess and now I just can't get it to work at all!  All I did was to press on this [what I thought was a new TV station, as new ones get added all the time] called Showcase Entertainment TV.  A message came up saying something like "this is not available on your device" but then it continued with a notification that it was downloading ... so I pressed what I thought was a button - any button - to stop it, but now it seems to be just frozen on that place and no amount of button-pressing will get it to move to any TV station at all.  I have turned it off and on a few times, but no change. It's still there - stuck. I'm going to have to get a TV engineer in to sort it.  Goodness knows how much that's gonna cost.
Could be worse though I suppose  - at least I still have the telly in the sitting room - but there's no recorder with that - and it's a nuisance having to rush to get a cuppa tea in the adverts without missing anything - and also I do like to sit in the kitchen sometimes and watch telly there.
heh heh - I suppose now I'll just have to go on the internet in the kitchen instead ............  

I've just discovered that wid the wi-fi I can go online with my Kobo also! Email, Google, forums, the lot. Its all in b/w there but still good to know.

Sitting in the garden right now getting a bit of sun, wid a cuppa coffee & doing this on my phone.

(Back inside now)

This is the exact product that I got.
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The link explains what it's all about and shows just how easy - and quick - it was to set up!

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This is where I had the problem before - not being able to get wi-fi.  (My router didn't have WPS, whatever that is!)

Of course, if your router doesn’t feature WPS then the only option is to manually setup a separate WiFi hotspot.  Thankfully this is quite easy as well.  TP-Link provide a utility which allows you to connect to the WPA4220 via your web browser.  Doing so brings up the web configuration, from which you can give the WiFi hotspot a name and control its security settings.

This great little device has solved that, because that's exactly what I have done.  

I somehow managed to banjax the telly in the kitchen, pressed something I shouldn't have I guess and now I just can't get it to work at all! All I did was to press on this [what I thought was a new TV station, as new ones get added all the time] called Showcase Entertainment TV. A message came up saying something like "this is not available on your device" but then it continued with a notification that it was downloading ... so I pressed what I thought was a button - any button - to stop it, but now it seems to be just frozen on that place and no amount of button-pressing will get it to move to any TV station at all. I have turned it off and on a few times, but no change. It's still there - stuck. I'm going to have to get a TV engineer in to sort it. Goodness knows how much that's gonna cost.

Still a problem with the kitchen TV. I phoned up a TV repair place advertised in local area. Got a load of bump off the guy on t'other end of phone. I explained what the problem was, but he didn't seem to be listening ... just a big long spiel (which he seemed to be reading from some standard edict) about how it costs a one-off £50 for a visit, then if needs parts etc or if can't be fixed on premises might need to take it away and extra charges then for parts and other things etc etc ......... I asked where they were based (as I had only rung them because they said they service NW10 area (amongst others). He wouldn't say where, just that they were a central countrywide service - Forget that! ... I want somewhere that I can get back to - especially if they announce they needed to take the thing away! (after paying £50 for the visit alone!) ...
So, I found a place up Cricklewood Broadway and went in there earlier today. A nice man called Tony runs the place (I think he may be Greek). Took photos of the problem to show him (the notice that's stuck on the screen now whenever you turn on the thing) and brought along the 2 remotes to show him the models of each appliance. It would be £25 for a visit from him (exactly half of what the other outfit quoted). He recognised straight away where the problem was - that it's downloaded software that is not compatible wth my device. He says that that channel 'Showcase Entertainment TV' is actuallly a Sky channel, not Freeview which is my service. (I'm wondering to myself now if this has got something to do with the Wi-Fi, as I only saw this (what I thought was a new channel) listed on the day that I set up the Wi-fi. There are lots of Sky dishes around here - 2 on this building alone (upstairs flats) and just outside the kitchen window (next door). The wi-fi covers about a 300 yards area.)
Anyhow, Tony said he could try to see if there's a way to reset the thing (although I've already tried that for myself - problem is that all the buttons are frozen once you turn on, so can't even get to the Menu now or the set-up part). He says IF he is able to get it to reset to default, it would mean losing anything that I've already got recorded on there. I've got loadsa stuff recorded, which would be very sad to lose, but if it means being able to use the thing again, I reckon the pros outweigh the cons there ...
I've arranged for him to call here some time today anyway. The worst that can happen is that the thing is unfixable and will be no longer usable - which on the one hand is not too bad a loss because I got it through FreeCycle in the first place and didn't have to pay anything for it - but on the other hand it really was a perfectly working fabulous TV/Recorder which never gave any trouble until this unfortunate situation.

May the forsby withew

So, he took away (just the recorder part of) the TV yesterday to see if he could reset the hard drive. He did tell me that IF he is able to do it, I would lose all the stuff that I had recorded previously and I said he might as well go ahead because if the thing's not working I haven't got those recordings anyway(!)
He's just phoned now to say he's fixed it and bringing it back here later today. It's another £25 to pay as he took it away - so £50 altogether, but seeing I didn't have to pay for either of them in the first place (got them through FreeCycle) I suppose it's not so bad. The telly itself is useless without the box, as it's just the monitor really to watch the thing through.

I left this post half-written, as I had a sudden brainwave ............ All this has nudged me to fish out the black box (TV set top which is supposed to be able to put Freeview on the old TVs that didn't have it - forget whatchyacallem ... analogue? monologue? .... Anyway, I found it! I know I tried setting it up before, more than once, but without success. I thought well ya don't lose anything by trying again. EUREKA!!! I've done it! Got all the Freeview channels on the little tv in the kitchen now - without the recorder part! Fabulous picture also. It does everything the sitting room one does now. So, I'm thinking maybe when yer man comes this evening with the recorder part, I might get him to attach it to the sitting room one instead.

I suppose it was MEANT .... if the telly hadn't gone funny I would've just continued on as it was - forgetting ALL about the little Freeview Box because thinking it just wasn't working for me.

It's getting better ...............

Now that I have the pass-phrase for the wi-fi (ID number), I am now able to go ahead and set up the wi-fi facility on the printer. I did it today - and now the printer will immediately print out something from the computer without having any wires connected to it! (wirelessly ) So (haven't tried yet, but ...) could even be in the den on the computer and can print something from there and it will print out in the sitting room (so long as the printer is turned on, of course!) This wi-fi facility has always been on the printer. In the past I got as far as having the blue light light up for wi-fi - but always came to a full stop when it asked me for this flamin' ID (pass-phrase).

This is so exciting!!!!!
Really happy for you that you have wifi now... hurrahhhh