In one of my previous posts I promised some words on setting up a home network with Vista. At home I have ADSL (12000/650) provided by Norways biggest broadband/telephone/cellular provider Telenor. We have a total of 4 computers in the household, all of them running on different versions of Vista; (1) The family desktop computer situated in my upstairs den – A Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600 running Windows Vista Ultimate, (2) My laptop – A HP Pavilion dv9074ea desktop replacement system that has taken over the role of my main computer also running Windows Vista Ultimate, (3) my sons desktop, a home built system with the AMD Athlon 2600 CPU  running Windows Vista Home Premium and finally an (4) aging Toshiba Satellite S121 laptop that barely runs Windows Vista Basic. On top of that we have a couple of rooms to let, presently occupied by a student running Windows XP Home.

Since the household computers are spread out over the three floors of the house, wiring were out of the question. Telenor provides the DSL modem, a Thompson SpeedTouch 564T2, and my wireless router is a D-link 624 54g.

Setting up a wireless network in Vista is simplicity itself. After getting connected to my provider having set up the modem and wireless router, setting the D-624 to filter by MAC adress as well as WPA encryption the routine is as follows;

1. Connect to your network by right-clikcing the network icon and then choosing that spesific option in the taskbar.

2. Choose your wireless network from the list

3. Enter the WPA encryption key

4. You are connected.

5. Repeat the above steps for the other computers as well

To see all your networked computers go into the Network and Sharing Center and choose to map your network (View Full Map);

It cannot be simpler than that! A huge improvement over the way I had to set everything up in Windows XP SP2 not even mentioning how it was done pre- SP2.

Returning back home in Norway for work after 1 year abroad took a while longer getting used to than I ever imagined. Getting time to blog has not been prioritized when competing with the childrens after-school activities, a house and garden in desperate need for some maintenance and then of course my work.

I spent all of this summer painting the house. Or rather, trying to paint the house; We didn’t exactly have anything worth calling summer this year. We went straight from spring to autumn – so suffice it to say that it has been a wet season.

Enough complaining. I will now try to blog more regularly than I have done so far, which shouldn’t prove to be too difficult, given the frequency of my blog entries so far.

According to PCWorld, Vista’s honeymoon is over. The first flaw in the system has been discovered. Or has it?

If you read the article and do some further investigation the hack boils down to this;

1. You have your speakers and microphone on
2. The microphone is placed in a way so it can pick up what comes over the speakers
3. You have speak recognition turned on
4. From here we have two different ways for the hack
1. The computer user leaves his computer unlocked and a hacker comes around, and plays a soundfile that the mike picks up (I really do not understand this though – if the hacker is already there why bother with the soundfile – he already has access), or;
2. Someone sends the user a soundfile as an emailattachment, being totally unconscious he plays the soundfile. He does not notice that commands are issued and that the computer responds. He then of course approves every UAC prompt that comes around

Seriously! And this is called a flaw. I must say I am really impressed with the journalists at PCWorld and elsewhere for having dug this out. And giving it the frontpage treatment as well. Get real – this is just stupid. As one commenter on PCWorld said; He found another flaw: Someone leaves his computer and a hacker comes around….