MacBooks and wireless environments

A MacBook has crept into our PC dominated office - several staff have felt the need to "have a little play". It is really getting quite a few fans with a number of people wondering whether they should get one. There is no doubt that Macs have the design issue sorted - they are very very "sexy". Lots of debate going on, but the fact that a number of our professional visitors also use Macs often makes people wonder why. Those that use them seem to swear by them.

I also "borrowed" it for a weekend and trialed it (played?) at home - it was so easy to use and obvious (this from a life long PC user) that I must admit to being tempted. Interestingly, as I turned it on it promptly "found" an unsecured wireless signal, from goodness knows where, which allowed me the potential to access the internet. In many countries I would be guilty of stealing someone's signal. Already you can read of people appearing in court and being fined for doing precisely that.

Surely a priority of Governments should be to make wireless environments available for all - it's going to happen at some stage - it would be fantastic if it was sooner rather then later.

In Cayman, students at the University College already have free WiFi access (thanks to Digicel)across half of Grand Cayman, with total access by January 2008. This means the students can sit at home, on the beach or in their hammock to work, in other words, work where they want when they want. As one student noted -"it encourages you to want to work - I do far more work and research than I used to because I can always get on line" This probably says it all!