The rise of netbooks and laptops have enabled more and more people to work from anywhere in the world. Nowadays you can spend six hours browsing the web in Starbucks without having to connect to a power supply or wired internet connection, thanks to eight hour battery life and wireless internet.
Laptops are supposed to be a portable product, but for a long time to access the internet you were required to plug your laptop into a phone line, defeating the object of being portable as not everywhere has a free to use phone line. However thanks to advances in technology we now have wireless laptop computers which can connect to the internet wirelessly where ever there is a WiFi hotspot.
Free WiFi is commonly available at a lot of hotels, and restaurants such as McDonald’s which acts as a huge incentive to people who carry their wireless laptop computer or wifi enabled phone with them.
The factor that differentiates a laptop computer from a wireless laptop computer is whether or not the laptop has a “wireless network adapter” built in. Wireless network adapters aren’t necessarily expensive and most laptop computers do come with them pre-installed, however it is always worth checking.
If you have already bought a laptop and it doesn’t have a wireless network adapter installed, don’t worry there are still options. The two best alternatives are mobile internet dongles and USB network adapters.
Mobile Internet Dongle – Internet dongles are the latest mobile internet product to enter the market, by connecting to the mobile phone carriers internet networks you can connect to the internet on your laptop from pretty much anywhere, a wifi connection isn’t even required!
Internet dongles aren’t free however, for this luxury you have to pay either monthly or on a per usage basis.
USB Network Adapter – If you don’t have a wireless network adapter fitted inside your laptop computer you can buy an external one that plugs into the laptops USB port. These work exactly the same as their internal cousin, in fact sometimes they have better coverage because of their arials.
Wireless laptop computers can be purchased at all good computer retailers, both online and offline so there is no shortage of choice!
