My Christmas present to myself: A Nokia 770 internet tablet. The immediate motivation for this is to be able to check e-mail and other simple internet usage during the day, without drawing attention from Big Brother.

To use this at home I have to get wireless working on the LAN here. My previous attempt at this failed— James’s wifi equipped Laptop could not connect. On Saturday (Christmas Eve) I reconnected the wireless router. Last night I tried the Nokia. It was really tantalizing–I could sometimes make a wireless connection, but it would not stay connected. I changed the wireless channel on the router, and turned off the high speed mode, but it did not help. Since James was having trouble with his laptop, I was inclined to suspect the router.

I confirmed this by taking the Nokia to a coffee shop with wifi, just to be sure it is working properly. It is. I was able to read my e-mail off the web from both of my ISP’s, and to access LJ. It is cute and fun. I have a new addiction.

Next step: Get this working at home. My present router (a Belkin) is working just fine for the ethernet cable connections. I like the web interface for configuring it–I have some fairly specific firewall needs. But the wireless connection is demonstrably inadequate. I need to replace it.

Any recommendations for a wireless router or access point?