School me on routers

[ace028]

I have a iMac and I am trying to share its WiFi with my dell laptop and it only works if I don't have a password for the network. Should I buy a wireless router instead. I would like to connect my dell laptop, printer, dvd player for netflix and my Wii. Which router should I buy?

[Diegoboy]

What router do you have now?

[ace028]

I don't. My iMac has built in wifi.

[ace028]

I was using bluetooth paring for my laptop but it wont work now for some reason. I have it enabled on my mac, but it wont connect to the internet on my laptop, but it did work fine, just a little bit slow.

[Diegoboy]

I'll admit that I don't know squat about mac, but your wifi is or was connecting to someones router to have internet. Someone has to be broadcasting their paid internet. My guess is that whoever's internet (possibly a neighbor) you were jumping on, found out and secured their network with a password.

[ace028]

It is my network I was using. It works when I pair it via bluetooth well it did work.

Which router should I get to connect everything in the house? Printer, laptop, Wii, dvd player? Does it matter which router?

[Diegoboy]

Oh, Sorry. I, myself, am a big fan of linksys (by Cisco). If you go with a linksys, then downlosd their app for easy mac setup. The app is called LELA (Linksys Easy Link Advisor)

[pescador]

I'm running a Linksys router and 16 port switch with 2 Macbooks, a couple Dells, network printer, 2 network drives all with no problem. Setup the security on the router and enter it on each device.
Only thing I'm not sure of is the DVD but if you hard wire it no problem.

[ace028]

Well, I ended up with a 2TB apple time machine, I know it was rediculusly expensive, but it has the 2TB HDD and a airport extreme, so I can wirelessly back up my stuff, and share the hdd with other computers. The inital backup takes forever but after that it just does the stuff that changed. I am going to partition it so I can put all my junk on it that I don't want as part of the back up. So far I just plugged it in, and with ease I got my iMac, dell laptop, Wii, cell phone all setup on the wireless network, now just got to add my printer. I found out my dvd player don't do netflix so i'm not going to bother hooking that up, the wii is suppose to get netflix soon tho.