Is wpa2 hardware, software or both

The idea behind WPA v1 was to not have any modifications to the hardware. It was suppose to be a firmware or software driver only patch job.

WPA2 802.11i adds AES encryption is usually (not always) requires hardware support. However, not all vendors do AES encryption in hardware. Today, Microsoft released WPA2 support for XP SP2, all in software. See: |

| should work in any laptop, with any card, that uses Wireless Zero Config and XP SP2. I haven't tried it yet.

It should work in any laptop, with any card, that uses Wireless Zero

It's a shame that both MS and the OEM's don't put the same effort into other mobile devices for without equal support on them, you still end up with a totally fragmented solution and possibly still stuck without the ability to upgrade.

E.g. Dell Axim X3i, no support for WPA let alone WPA2, no plans from Dell, buy a new PDA please or stick with WEP or 802.1x which for a small home LAN is pretty often a non starter.

David.

> It should work in any laptop, with any card, that uses Wireless Zero

PPC 2003 has WPA support through 3rd party software.

Fragmented? You're being generous. There are a bunch of protocols in the specs that are not currently supported. This explains it quite well.

There's considerably more work to do if one is to support all the authentication methods specified in the Wi-Fi Alliance expanded version of the 802.11i standard. Fast roaming is currently not unsupported by anyone. It will be quite a while before all these acronyms are uniformly supported. There are quite a few products with WPA2 certification on the wi-fi.org web pile. However, the handhelds are conspicuously missing. I think they're waiting for AES support in hardware, rather than clutter up their limited RAM trying to impliment it in software.

Windoze Mobile 2003 and Windoze CE 4.2 all have basic EAP-TLS support for WPA2 from assorted vendors. See:

instructions.

Here's a 3rd party WPA supplicant (client) for verious handheld devices:

methinks will work for your Axim.

Also, Funk Softare Oddity Client for PPC has WPA support for the Axim:

The best things in life are free. You'll have to settle for 2nd best.

You could wait for Microsloth to either buy the company and Borg their product, or embrace and extend the technology thereby wiping out the company's market. Yeah, monopolies are good for the consumers.

If I ever find time to write the next great wireless utility program, you can safely bet that it will NOT be free. I need the cash to support my decadent and lavish lifestyle. Of course, I'm a terrible programmist and you'll probably refuse to pay for it based on it's quality. Hmmm.... maybe I'll do something else instead.

Digging into my bookkeeping, I find that I spent about $600 on shareware and beggarware in calendar 2004. That's a bit more than usual. During the same period, I received $15 via Paypal for answering questions in this newsgroup. Google groups shows 950 postings so that's $0.016 per answer. Cheap.

Eeek they want money!! :)

Likewise. :)

David.

The proverbial two cents. The Invisible Hand at work?

In the USA, the "invisible hand" is the government tax system. They have their hand in my pocket and can make my money disappear without a trace. We now know exactly what my advice and opinions are worth.

Incidentally, the $15 payment cost me much more than $15 repairing the damage it did to my bookkeeping system. I mis-entered the credit in the wrong account and spent a substantial amount of time in April untangleing the mess. Fortunately, that was a one time problem. I can now efficiently handle gratuities, unsolicited contributions, Paypal, gifts, bribes, payola, commissions, and cash.

:) My gripe is towards Dell to be honest. It's up to them to provide support for their products a little longer than something like a year to

18 months post sale.

David.

I'm bored. Might as well pontificate on the topic.

Dell sells extended warranties on most of their products. Prices and terms vary but the usual rule of thumb is 10-25% of the purchase price to go to 3 or 4 years. The cost/benefits vary depending on product. I usually advise my customers to purchase the extended warranty on high usage equipment (servers, primary office workstations). Laptops are a problem because Dell has a separate "accidental damage" service contract, which I find to be rather expensive.

The calcs are a bit messy, as it is necessary to estimate the replacement and repair costs 3-4 years in advance. Give me a sample product, initial cost, and I'll work the numbers for you. However, I can also predict the results without grinding the numbers. The value depreciation and replacement cost of a product 3-4 years out is often cheaper than buying the extended warranty. The exception is laptops, which have a much higher incidence of failure than desktops. You can tell that Dell knows the MTBF numbers in advance because their extended warranty costs vary considerably from product to product. In most cases, extended warranties are like lottery tickets. They're a tax on the mathematically deficient public.

I've rarely had to use Dell's warranty service. Unfortunately, my results have been spotty. Onsite service was outsourced to a local company that methinks has serious competence problems. Replacement parts are often unobtainable. Next day service is typically 2 weeks. Yet, when I can get Dell's attention, I can get them to ship me the parts quickly and be done with it.

Also, you should understand that extended warranty service is not a sign of a quality vendor. Quite the opposite. Extended warranties are what is required to convince large customers that the vendor will not implode leaving them hanging, and that the product is not a piece of junk.

More often, extending the warranty is cheaper for the manufactory than introducing the necessary quality in the product required to extend the lifetime. If a unit has a 10% failure rate over a 4 year period, but it costs 10% more to increase the product lifetime to 4 years (which must be applied to ALL production units), it's much cheaper for the manufactory to simply extend the warranty than to fix the problem. Even better if you can get the customer to pay for the warranty. That's why Dell pushes and telemarkets their extended warranty so aggressively.

Dell could probably offer a lifetime warranty if they wanted. The catch is that they must exclude accidental damage and customer abuse. My guess is about half of the real warranty issues appear within the first year. The out of box failures are usually a great predictor of future reliability. Past about 3 years, moving parts start to fail (fans, hard disks, drives). The rest are almost always abuse, lack of required maintenance, and accidents. If Dell excludes all those, they will have very few failures to deal with past the first year.

Methinks it would be more honest to call an extended warranty "insurance". Effectively, you and the manufacturer are gambling on the reliability of the product. If it fails, and you're not insured, your repair costs will exceed the cost of the insurance. As with all insurance policies, you only insure those things that you cannot afford to lose and destroy (i.e. catastrophic losses). Whatever, the name, the cost/benfits are calculated exactly the same way.

In order to keep somewhat on topic:

When buying constantly evolving technologies like wireless devices, it is best to buy now what you need now. Companies like Dell only have so many programmers and engineers at their disposal and they need to determine whether their time should be spent supporting old devices or developing new devices. In the case of constantly evolving technologies, the latter usually wins out in order to keep pace with competitors. So, one should not expect devices to do any more than what they do the day they are bought.

In order to continue the rant:

I'm glad that I got the extended warranty on my Dell Latitude C400. Within days of receiving the computer, its LCD began developing moderately sized white blotches. So, Dell replaced the LCD. However, the replacement display also slowly developed a few of these blotches. I had that one for another two years until part of the hinge cracked. Luckily, the LCD still worked and Dell replaced the whole display again. So where's the rant? Well, a relative of one of my former coworkers owns an LCD panel fab in Taiwan. This relative does not like working with regional manufacturers because they demand that all panels be at or better than spec. On the other hand, he loves working with US manufacturers because many of them only care about a sure supply in order to meet current demand. So, people like me sometimes end up in situations where big ticket items need to be replaced not just once but a few times because the whole current supply is bad...

-Yves

Hold on though, i'm not talking about warranty but support for a product.

You can still get BIOS updates for much older kit and yet they choose to effectively obsolete a product such as the X3i for no reason other than "because we want to" when they have a firmware update for the X30i which is virtually identical other than the processor I think.

Reading the Dell forums, there are a lot of people that have just bought their last Dell although that won't bother Dell as they only sell on volume and PDA's aren't key earners for the sales folk i'm sure.

Interested to read that you haven't used their warranty much. The only bit that's original on this laptop is the case bottom and screen surround plastic. All other parts have been replaced - yes ALL! :)

David.

Support as in continued BIOS and driver development? OK, I can play it that way.

A different processor is not a minor change. The problem isn't writing the new code, but the regression testing on the older devices. Every manufacturer needs to draw the line on when the stop supporting a product. There are quite a few that do it quite a bit worse than Dell.

Dell does not build products and write code. They contract with vendors to supply hardware and drivers. The length of driver and bios support is often tied to the length of the contract. Dell and their vendors would most happily cut off support immediately when they stop advertising the product. However, large institutional buyers (i.e. the US government) specify continued support for XX years and literally force Dell into extending development for at least as long as their service contract runs. That doesn't work for small ticket items, are usually cheaper to replace than to repair under a service contract.

It really gets ugly in the marketing department depending on who is in control. Sometimes, the plan is to use extended support and service as a sales tool to demonstrate to the customer that the vendor will not abandon them. Other times, the plan is to wipe support for anything they no longer sell. Most companies, including Dell, experiment with warranties, extended support, and service contracts to see what they can get away with.

I spent 10 years working in a different industry getting a good picture of who complains, who has problems, and needs support. The rule of thumb was that about 5% of the customer base is cursed with the ability to destroy anything they touch. Another 5% will complain about anything including perfection. The rest are generally satisfied. I suspect the percentages are higher in the computer biz, where customer expect the manufacturer and dealer to indemnify them from their own actions. Also, you might find it interesting to read the scrambled Dell support forums and see how many other complaints and threats were posted by those that proclaim they are dumping Dell. I've never done this in the Dell forums, but other support forums tend to collect a few chronic complainers, complete with nym shifting and multiple personalities.

One computer vendor (name withheld) decided to seriously investigate some of the more rabid complaints in their online support forum. I did the wireless part with 10 complaints to follow up on. Five of the ten either refused to talk to me when contacted directly or did not return my call. One was a virus infected machine. One had XP reinstalled 4 times to the point where it would not "activate" and was declared dead on that basis. I was also unable to get a coherent problem report from this person. Two others were easily solved with updated wireless and Windoze drivers which had been repeatedly recommended in the forum. One had been worked on by an independent repair shop and had apparently (my guess) been butchered. It was eventually sent in for warranty repair, even though it really should not be covered. Incidentally, of the five that did not return my repeated calls, I have some reason suspect that some may be stolen computers.

OK, ten complaints is not a great sample in a forum with hundreds of complaints. However, it's a clue as to what's behind all the yelling, screaming, and blustering.

I don't sell Dell directly, but often advise my customers to purchase Dell hardware. The general results have been excellent with a few exceptions. One company bought five Optiplex GX-150 machines. All of them eventually blew up either the onboard ethernet port, parallel port, or both. Replacement motherboards did the same thing after a few months. Dell claimed abuse, but I know that this was not the case. I eventually gave up and just crammed in a 2nd ethernet card. They're still running today after about 6 years.

I've also had problems with the flimsy power cords attached to the huge bricks that pass for laptop power supplies these days. The oversized connector, with the tiny center pin, and tiny cable, often break when the connector is pushed into the wall. The connector is not replaceable or commonly available. So, I have to get Dell to replace the entire power supply. All my customers Dell power supplies now have a home made strain relief at this connector.

The Inspiron 5000 and 7000 series laptops have had problems with the screws that hold the hinges. They get loose and eventually strip the threads. I've had to do some ugly machine work to fix these. As these laptops are long obsolete, Dell had apparently sold their parts collection to some dealer.

That's about as bad as it gets. I'm not sure how many assorted Dell products I have in service. My guess is several hundred. I can grind the numbers if you're interested. As long as there is no abuse involved, they last and run well enough.

I've given up trying to stay on topic.

White blotches are usually caused by overheating or mechanical tension. Apple had a chronic problem thanks literally bending the panel when closed:

Another blotch-like problem is fairly easy to induce. People tend to assume that the glass LCD panels are totally sealed and that nothing can get inside. Not so. The panels usually have a slit near the bottom of the panel to deal with changes in air pressure. Given enough time, capillary action can suck liquids through this slot and into the panel and destroy it.

An acquaintance does IT for a large company and told me a story. The night cleaning crew was cleaning the LCD monitors every night. I think these were NEC LCD panels but I'm not sure. The cleaning crew was instructed to use some special cleaner and to wipe everything dry. No problems for several months.

Then, they switched cleaning services and forgot to tell them how to clean the LCD screens. Someone went around spraying large quantities of some noxious cleaner on all the monitors, waited a while, and then walked around to wipe them. This created a puddle of liquid at the bottom of the LCD panel, which eventually was sucked into the panel by capillary action. Users discovered that the lower 1/2" inch or so of their displays were turning dark and unreable.

Yeah, I know. It's a bad habit. I'll try to abrev.

I used to have a 5000. I didn't think the case was that flimsy. It was a solid and boxy construction that appeared to be quite rugged. The hinges were a problem only because they used dead soft aluminium for the base metal and hardly any depth to the mounting screws. Maybe I treat my laptops better than most as I like to keep mine inside solid brief case carriers instead of nylon bags and simulated leather bags. While I'm ranting, I've seen far too many of those simulated leather bags destroy a laptop. The way to do it is to put the laptop in its appointed place, place the power supply directly over the LCD display lid, and apply pressure as in bury it under some luggage. The power supply will shove it's way into the lid. Usually, it just cracks the lid, but I've also seen one LCD display destroyed. I'll stay with my brief case.

Well, that's certainly a fair compliant considering the price. I did point out 3rd party WPA support. Short support lives are becoming more common. If I do my homework, I can probably name a few vendors that released ver 1.0 firmware products that have never bothered to fix known bugs. I'm rather suprised that Dell would do that as driver and firmware support for their desktops and laptops seems to be about

4 years from date of introduction.

Drats. I forgot to abrev.

Jeff, you write too much! ;)

Personally, I don't have a major beef here, just a laptop that had a load of parts fail but all replaced under warranty to i'm not actually complaining.

An Inspiron 5000 case that literally broke in pieces, thin design, not particularly well stress tested but then Dell didn't have anything to do with that one, just bought it in from Compal who if I recall are Taiwanese. I just replaced the case with one I bought off Ebay.

As I said, my biggest complaint here is simply that of withdrawing firmware support from an 18 month old product, the X3i, to introduce WPA. I actually don't need it either but I just think it's a little short sighted especially if you had bought a load to use for a custom app and were told, "sorry, no updates matey!".

David.

Ah yes, how my children destroyed the LCD on one of my PDA's. Bubble liquid spilt on the kitchen worktop with the PDA face down in it.

David.