Yeah, I have to agree with you there, Bruno. I do tech support, and every single time I set up a wireless network for someone, I ask them to pick a 13-character password. It's not always necessary, but I've found that 99% of the time Windows will not balk at 13 characters, so I just give the user a line like it's more secure to have a password that long (which it kinda is, considering most want a 4-6 character password) and just set it up that way to avoid complications.

On the flip side, though, I've come across one or two devices that don't like the Airport Extreme's wireless security. On those devices, if I turned off security completely, they would see the router and connect. But when security was on, they couldn't even see it. And no, SSID broadcast was not disabled.

Frankly, most aspects of home networking are overly complicated, regardless of what platform you're using.


Ugh, I've run into that too. I've installed a few cheap Netgear USB wireless NICs, and they've all required their own [terrible] software be installed in order to work properly. As annoying as wireless networking is in Windows, I always try to use the built-in Windows software to connect to the network.

Come to think of it, did you try that, Bruno? Did the computer come with alternate software for the wireless card? That stuff is almost universally junk that I uninstall immediately.