Wi-Fi Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Will it cost a lot to fix the WiFi on my laptop?

Posted on September 2, 2023

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Question from Fred: I have a 2 year old Lenovo laptop. It was working fine till yesterday evening but now the Wi-Fi won’t work.

I thought it might be a setting, but the Wi-Fi adapter isn’t even showing up in the Device Manager under Windows 11.

Since it won’t work with Windows, I tried booting into Linux Mint (I have a dual-boot setup). Mint won’t recognize the Wi-Fi adapter either so I’m thinking it must be a hardware problem.

Can this be fixed without costing me an arm and a leg? [Read more…]

Q&A: How’s my daughter getting on Facebook with her phone shut off?

Posted on September 2, 2023

Question from Deidra: I have grounded my 13 year old daughter for a month for getting into some pretty serious trouble at school.

Part of her “grounding” is a total ban on cell phone and Internet use of any kind.

To enforce that, I’ve had her iPhone shut off and I’ve also turned off the Wi-Fi on our router.

The problem is she’s still finding a way to get on Facebook and talk to her friends because I can see her “liking” stuff and leaving comments. How is that possible? [Read more…]

How to use a wired Ethernet connection with a newer MacBook

Posted on June 20, 2023

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

These days wireless Wi-Fi connections are the norm, but there are still situations in which we need to connect our computers to a router with a wired Ethernet connection.

In fact, just last month three different people asked me how they can connect a recent MacBook Pro or MacBook Air that doesn’t have an RJ-45 Ethernet connector to their router via an Ethernet cable.

It can be certainly be done, and it’s actually quite easy to do… [Read more…]

Q&A: Should I let my neighbor piggyback off my WiFi network?

Posted on May 21, 2023

Question from Mallorie: I need some advice Rick, and it’s sort of a touchy situation.

We live in a duplex and our neighbor has a 14 year old son who bought a Straight Talk phone from my daughter.

The thing is she didn’t reset the phone before she sold it to him because he said he’d like to just take over her phone number, and she said that would be fine.

This phone still automatically connects to our WiFi network, and I know for a fact that he uses our WiFi a lot because he told my daughter that he does.

My question is do you think he could cause us any problems by piggybacking off of our wireless network? [Read more…]

Q&A: Is there a surcharge for using WiFi instead of cellular data?

Posted on April 29, 2023

Question from Debby: A couple of months ago I bought my first smartphone.

I absolutely love it, but I got a huge bill yesterday because they said I went over my monthly data allotment by several gigabytes.

I do watch a lot of videos every day, but I didn’t realize it would cause me to be charged extra.

My daughter said I need to use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data but I don’t want to get hit with a big bill for that too. She said using Wi-Fi is free, but I want to be sure since I can’t afford another huge bill.

So will I be charged extra if I use Wi-Fi to watch my videos? [Read more…]