Microsoft announced official retail prices for Windows 7 today, setting prices at nearly 10 percent below the prices for Windows Vista—good news for consumers who want new technology without the price tag. It’s also good news for Microsoft, whose strategy will likely boost sales for the long-term Windows 7 lifecycle and short-term Windows 7 promotion.

Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade, which is portending to be Window’s biggest cash crop, will be available on preorder for a shocking $49.99, but only for a limited time—from June 26 through July 11—and only for U.S. customers. Business customers who want the beefier Windows 7 Professional edition upgrade will only pay $99.99 on the promotion

For customers who purchase Windows 7 after the July 11 promotion will pay a substantially higher price. Preorders will still be available, with the standard cost of $119.99. Although this price is more than twice the cost of the promotion price, it is 8 percent lower than Windows Vista, which carried a retail price tag of $159.99 during its 2007 launch. Windows 7 Professional will cost $199.99. These costs will remain the same post-October 22, which is the scheduled release date for Windows 7.

Although most consumers will choose the upgrade route, Microsoft plans to sell new versions of Windows 7 as well. The Home Premium version is $199.99, and other Windows 7 carry the standard (non-reduced) prices. Windows 7 Professional will cost $299.99, and Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $319.99. These prices are, incidentally, identical to comparable versions of Windows Vista. Microsoft’s strategy seems to be in keeping with the price-slashing that is being attempted by software producers in lieu of the economic decline.

Have you ever lost a password to a Windows computer and just wish you had a way to get into the computer? There is a simple solution with KonBoot

KonBoot modifies the Windows Kernel in real time, thus allowing you to get past the login prompt when you start Windows. You can download KonBoot to either a floppy or burn it on to a CD-Rom. You insert either media into the computer and restart. When the computer restarts, KonBoot starts and launches Windows. When you are back to the login prompt again you can press enter to by pass the prompt. KonBoot will not allow you to change the password of the user, but you could create another account that has the ability to later change that password.

Remember, that this should only be used on computers in which you have permission to use the tool on or that you own. If you were to try this with any other computer, it is illegal and you could be put into jail. So use it at work on that computer of the employee who was just fired, or on one of the computers that your company is required to keep due to legal issues and nobody knows the password for. Try it out on your own computer just to see how it works, that way if you run into an time you need to use it at work you know how the program works. Even use it to help your friend who keeps forgetting his password and has to call you to recover it. Don’t use it at your work if you don’t have permission to use it, or at school/college where you can get into a lot of trouble. Remember the saying from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.”. With this is a powerful tool, which you have to use with responsibility.

You may have read that Microsoft is taking a new approach with the release of Windows 7 then they have done with any of their other operating systems. Microsoft has opened their beta program, and allowed the public to download and use Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 for free until June 1, 2010. The version that they allow you to test is the Ultimate version of Windows 7, which will have all the bells and whistles of the operating system. The only “drawback” for this test is that starting on March first of 2010, your computer will shut down after being on for two hours, but you will be warned about this two weeks before it happens. Here is a hands-on review of Windows 7 RC1.

Before we get into the review, let’s talk about some changes that Windows 7 has compared to Windows Vista.

DirectX 11

Yes, you read that correctly. Microsoft has updated DirectX again when designing Windows 7. DX 11 is suppose to be an improvement on the DX10, which was released with Vista. DirectX 11, has been designed to improve performance issues compared to 10, and there are rumors that DX9 graphic cards can support the new version which wasn’t possible with DX10. Other than this there has been little information released on how DX11 will effect the end user. Most of the information that has been released has been directed toward developers.

Aero Peek

Aero is a whole new graphic engine that controls Windows, and was released with Vista. With Windows 7, Microsoft added the Aero Peek feature. This feature allows you to “peek” at windows which you have open on your screen. If you hover over an application in the task bar, a smaller preview window will open up. If you hover your mouse over the preview window, then all the other windows become invisible, leaving only that window on your screen. To get the full idea of what Aero Peek is, you can view this Youtube video.

User Account Control

This is one feature in Windows Vista that everyone hated, and wish Microsoft wouldn’t have added. Even with my limited experience with Vista, I have grown to loath the UAC. The UAC in Windows 7 has been tweaked to allow the user to have greater control over this feature. In Windows Vista, there were ways to turn off the UAC by turning off by using hacks, which may have compromised the security the UAC was intended to create. In Windows 7, you now have the option to disable the prompts without hacks.

Since we now know some of major changes to Windows 7, let’s get into the review itself.

I had grown fond of Windows XP, one of the reasons I choose not to upgrade to Vista, so making the jump to Windows 7 was something that I was skeptical to do at first.  I had heard about the beta program about a week before it was actually released, and during this time I was debating if I should take the leap and install Windows 7.  I have a friend who was in the closed beta and was praising Windows 7 as the second coming of Windows XP.  He also was like myself and doubted that Microsoft could release an OS better than XP, so I was surprised that he liked Windows 7 so much.  When it came time for the public beta program to be open, I took a gamble to install 7 and see what the big hype was.  In the back of my mind, I was thinking that I would be returning to XP soon, so it really wasn’t a big loss.

The installation process was a lot easier, and better than what I expected.  Since I skipped Windows Vista, I was use to the XP install process.  I was expecting to see a blue screen with white text, and a green progress bar during the install but instead I was greeted with a refreshing light blue background, which had a tree design on the left and more colorful install prompts.   The installation was fast which isn’t what I expected.  The installer had detected my three partitions, two of which were for my Ubuntu installation, and one for my Windows XP installation.  The partition, and formating was a breeze.  The graphically based partition process was a big improvement to the XP text based process. About 30 minutes after partitioning my drive, I was welcomed by the Windows 7 desktop for the first time.  The first thing I noticed was that Aero was enabled.  I found this strange since to enable Aero in Vista, I had heard you needed a DX10 graphic card.  My graphic card only supported DX9, but I still had the Aero blurring effect behind the application’s title bar, and the task bar.

At this point, I am dreading trying to find drivers for all of my hardware.  I did notice that Windows didn’t install the drivers for my sound card, so I put that on my mental check list of things to do.  I also had to install my keyboard, mouse, and video drivers, so that I can use some of the advance features the driver software provides, such as my keyboard’s LCD screen.   Other than these three devices it seemed like Windows detected and installed my other hardware drivers.  It even detected that I had two monitors connected, and configured them to span the desktop.  I started up Internet Explorer to download all of the needed drivers.  My sound card manufacture, Creative, actually had a beta driver for Windows 7, which I was surprised.  Although my keyboard and mouse manufacture, Logitech, didn’t have Windows 7 drivers, and along with my video card manufacture, Nvidia.  Knowing that Windows 7 and Vista used the same kernel version, I took a risk and installed the Vista drivers, which worked fine.  During the process of installing drivers,  I encountered the User Account Control a few times.  It was enough to slow down the installation a little, since I had to confirm that I wanted to install the software that I just downloaded, but at this time it was something I thought I could deal with.  Now it was time to reboot for the first time.

Windows 7 shut down quicker then I expected, and I was looking at my BIOS information during the boot up process, and I am directly taken into Windows 7.  This is a little disappointing for me, since it shows that Microsoft has again chosen to ignore any other operating systems that you may have installed on your computer.   This is something that I would like Microsoft to fix, since there are people who are dual booting.  Hopefully Microsoft will take a hint before the official release and start over writing the master boot record every time Windows is installed.  I will have to fix this “issue” later, but right now I want to continue to setting up the new installation.

I start installing my anti-virus software of choice, Avast!.  Again the UAC pops-up, I click continue and finish the install.  I then head over to Adobe’s site and install Flash.  Once again, I am slowed down by the UAC, and I can start to see how frustrating it could be with other users.   I continue configuring and adjusting other software, when the UAC keeps popping up.  Now that it seems like everything is installed, I head over to the Control Panel to look into configuring my display options.   As soon as the Control Panel opens, I notice that there isn’t an option to view the Control Panel in “classic” mode.  Even in Windows XP, I preferred the 9x Control Panel over the XP Control Panel design since the 9x design give you access to such things as Administrator Tools.  I closed the Control Panel, and then choose to use Nvidia’s Control Panel to adjust my display options.  The UAC was there to greet me when I ran Nvidia’s Control Panel for the first time.  At this point I feel the UAC has overstepped it’s boundaries, so I started searching for ways to keep it quiet.  I know that Windows Haxor has an article here, but I want to see the “official” way to turn it off.   The UAC again raises it’s ugly head, as I am looking for solutions.  Instead of just clicking Allow right away, I read over the entire window.  That is when I saw the option to adjust the UAC level.  I click the option, and I am presented with another window which has a vertical slider to adjust the UAC level.  I chose the second to last option, which I thought should keep the UAC quiet.   I then head back adjust the video settings, when the UAC pops up again.  Thinking I took care of it last time, I am a little confused and starting to get a little frustrated. I open the preference again, and set the option to the lowest setting.  At first I didn’t want to resort to this option, but since the last setting didn’t work, I was forced to do so.    Since changing the option to the lowest setting I haven’t had any issues out of the UAC.

Conquering the UAC, I chose to play around with Windows 7 itself now. Not knowing what to look at first, I checked out the games that Windows chose to install with this version, looks like they have gone beyond Mindsweeper, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire and other games which was included in Windows XP.  A chess game and Majhogg based game are included also.  I also checked out the search feature in 7.  I knew about it in Vista, and I personally was indifferent to it.  I felt like Microsoft was trying to copy Apple’s Quick Finder feature, which I had found beneficial in OS X. Feeling like Microsoft would screw up even this basic feature I then type some of the more common “Run commands” that I used in XP,  like CMD.  I was actually surprised at the speed as it updated the list of applications in the Start menu as I typed in each letter, and was even more surprised that the command prompt opened when I pressed enter.  I checked out the All Programs part of the Start Menu.  Going out of my way with Windows XP was group my applications into separate folders based on the type of application they were.  I would put applications such as web browser, or FTP clients into a Internet sub-folder, or media players into their own Media sub-folder.  I sort of have an OCD like issue where if there is more than one column of applications listed when All Programs has expanded, I feel unorganized, and somewhat overwhelmed.  I was glad to see that the programs didn’t expand into a different column, but all stayed in the one column.  Looks like I won’t have to customize my Start Menu after all.

After checking out some of the basic features, I wanted to looking into Aero a little more.  Especially Aero Peek, since I was hearing such great reviews about it.  I had experienced Aero Peek feature when installing drivers, and configuring 7, but now I really got to play with it. Over the week, I have grown to both love and loath the feature. I really like the option to jump directly to a window that I want, and be able to preview the window to make for sure it is the correct window.  This feature itself was a lot better then the grouping feature which was introduced in Windows XP.  I also like the ability to close a window from the Peek, rather than having to switch to the open window then close it.  The first few days, I thought that Aero Peek was the perfect way to handle multiple windows at once, but the more I used it the more I started to loath other aspects of the feature.  Since I use Internet Explorer as my primary browser, I have multiple tabs open at one time.  When browsing news sites, I may have up to 10 tabs open at once, and this makes Peek seem bulky when this happens since it treats every tab as it’s own window.  I also hated how Peek treated Google Talk, which I use as my primary IM client.   In XP, when I minimized my friends list it was minimized to the Google Talk icon next to the clock.  In Windows 7, the friends list is minimized to the task bar.  This means that when I use Peek, I now have to see my friends list in the preview windows when I don’t want to see it. One feature which Peek has, and I really like, that isn’t mentioned in most of the information about the feature, is when you download something in IE, the task bar icon can also tell you the percentage of that has downloaded.  The background behind the IE logo, will work as a percentage bar. So the higher the percentage of the file you have downloaded, that percentage of the background is green, instead of the normal color.

Another feature that I wanted to explore more in depth was the gadgets.  I had used OS X’s version called widgets, and found them very useful.  You can get a lot of information quickly just at a glance.  The standard gadgets which were included were clocks, sticky notes, performance monitors, RSS Feeder, and a currency converter.  Desktop Gadget, which is the application which displays all the gadgets you have installed and is used to enable the gadgets, had the option to look for additional gadgets submitted to Microsoft’s website. I choose to look at the additional gadgets there., most of them were basic, or redesigned of the standard ones.  There were different network and performance monitors, a few different styles of clocks, even a few social media gadgets.   The developer side of me was itching to create my own gadget, which I found was very easy to do if you have a little XML, JavaScript, and HTML knowledge.  At one point when searching the gadgets, I had about 10 gadgets running and I didn’t see a big performance change.

Speaking of performance, I am shocked at how smooth Windows 7 runs.  I heard the nightmares that Vista was slow even when running the least process intensive applications.  I also heard that the performance of Vista was not up to the performance of XP.  A friend told me that his computer would have performance issues if he had Aero turned on, but had to disable Aero because of how it slowed down his computer.   The computers that I used, which were designed for Vista, had also ran slow.  I know that Service Pack 1 was suppose to improve Vista’s performance alot, but there weren’t any reports on how much of an improvement it made.  Even with this information, I was expecting Windows 7 to slow down my computer compared to XP.  I have to say that I think that my computer is actually running quicker with 7.  Microsoft has done a very good job at optimizing the code from Vista.  I have been reading reports that people are getting 7 to run on netbooks, which wasn’t possible with Vista.

After a week of Windows 7, I would have to recommend it to anyone.  If you gave up on Microsoft because of Vista, I challenge you to give them another shot.   People say that Vista is ME version 2.0. If that is the case,  I say that Windows 7 is XP version 2.0.  Microsoft has been able to change and improve the features which drove people away from Vista.  The features which drew people to Vista, Microsoft has also been able to improve.  I just can’t wait until the official release comes out, I will be standing in line waiting for it.

We are going to be explaining two ways to create a steganogaphy. One is with a free program called Steghide, which can be downloaded from Sourceforge.net, and the other is with a compression software, such as WinRAR, 7-Zip, or which ever you prefer. Both methods are very simple to do, the only difference is Steghide will give you a little extra security because you will need Steghide to “extract” the hidden file, and you will also need to know a passphrase to access the file.

For this hack we are going to be hiding a birthday invitation that we are working on for our dad’s secret surprise birthday party. First, we will need to create or find the files that we are going to be using. For this tutorial, we are going to be hiding the invitation in an image of our dad. The name of the files we going to be using are dad.jpg, and invite.txt, and they are located in C:\dad. Also, for the compression tutorial, the compression software we will be using is WinRAR, which you download a trial version at RarSoft.

Compression Software Method

With the compression method the first thing you need to do is compress the file(s) that you want to be hidden. Most of the time you can do this by right clicking on the file, then you should see an option in the right-click menu to add the file to an archive or to compress the file. With WinRAR, when you right click the file you should see the option Add to invite.rar.

After compressing the file, you will need to open a command prompt. If you are using Vista you will need to go to Start and search for Command Prompt or CMD.exe. XP users can click Start, then click Run. When the Run dialog opens type in CMD and press Enter or click on OK. Once you have the command prompt open, you will need to change the directory to the directory in which the files are located. We will need to type in “cd dad” into the prompt and press enter. If you have your file saved somewhere else then you will need to replace “dad” with the path to the file.

Once we are located in the correct directory, we will need to issue the command “copy /b dad.jpg + invite.rar dad2.jpg”. This command tells Windows to copy the binary files for dad.jpg and invite.rar into dad2.jpg.

At this point, invite.txt is now hidden in dad2.jpg. If you were wanting to extract invite.txt from the image file, you can either open the file in your compression software, or the extension of dad2.jpg to the extension you used when compressing invite.txt.

Steghide Method

To install Steghide, first download the application from Sourceforge.net, then uncompress the zip downloaded file and run steghide.exe. Once you have Steghide installed, you will want to open a command prompt again, and going to the directory where the files are located. Now you will need to run the this command in order to hide the files, “steghide embed -cf dad.jpg -ef invite.txt”. This command tells steghide to copy the file dad.jpg and embed the file with invite.txt. (-cf flag means copy file, -ef means embeded file)

If entered correctly, you will be prompted to enter a pass phrase, and once entered you will be asked to re-enter the pass phrase. There some other switches which can be ran in the command also, such as -e which changed the encryption. Be sure to check out the Steghide manual, which is included in the download, for more information on those switches. We would also like to point out in our test only image files that ended with jpg worked. We used an image extension other than jpg, such as gif and png files, but we received an error stating that the file extension wasn’t supported. We tried to trick Steghide into thinking the image file we were using was a jpg file by renaming the file, and we still encountered the error. So if you are getting any errors like this make for sure the image file you are using is a jpg file, and isn’t a file that has had the extension renamed. If you find a way to make either file extension work, please post a comment telling us your work around.

Anyone wanting to retrieve the file that you have hidden in the dad.jpg, will need Steghide installed on their computer, and will need to know the pass phrase for the file. To actually retrieve the file, you will need to once open a command prompt and switch to the directory which has the file created by Steghide. Now that you are in the directory which the file is in, issue the command “steghide extract -sf dad.jpg”. This command is telling steghide that it should extract the stegofile (-sf). Once you have issued the command and pressed enter, you will be asked for the pass phrase to decrypt the file. After entering the pass phrase, you can check the directory and you will now see both the image and the text file.

Note: if you forget which file contains the hidden file, you can issue a steghide info -p <pass phrase> filename. You will need to replace <pass phrase> with your pass phrase and filename with the name of the file. If you don’t use -p <pass phrase> you will be prompted when getting the embed information. You can also use the -p flag when extracting a hidden file, which will remove the prompt for the pass phrase.

This Registry hack is very simple.  As we always state, remember to back up  your Registry before you make any changes to it.  A Registry with errors can cause your system to run slow, crash, or even not boot at all.

1. Go to Start  and search for regedit.  Windows XP users will have to go to Start, Run and type in regedit then click okay.
2. Expand the following on the left menu tree:

  H_Key_Local_Machine
   Software
    Microsoft
     Current Version

3. On the right you should see a registry key that is called RegisteredOwner.  Double click this key and you can change it’s value.   This will change the owner’s name.
4. If you want you can also change RegisteredOrganization also.  You will double click the key like you did RegisteredOwner and change the value.
5. Close your Registry

To check the if the changes have taken place, you can run Winver from a Run prompt or in Vista you can search for this application.

1.  Go to Start and search for MSCONFIG.
2.  Open MSCONFIG and click the Tools tab.
3.  Scroll until you find Disable UAP and highlight it.
4.  Next, click Okay.  You should see a Command Prompt open and when that window closes you can reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

The second way will disable all the Vista security that Microsoft has put into Vista.  To use go to Start > Control Panel > Security > Security Center > Other Security Settings and disable the option.

The issue with the first to methods is that it turns off all Vista security settings.  This can be an issue if you don’t have any other software protecting your operating system.  The next two options will not disable all of Vista’s security settings, but will just disable the prompt.

The third method was one that was “given” to David DeJean (http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/06/dont_shut_off_v.html) by a Microsoft employee.  This method will not work with Vista Home Basic nor Vista Home Premium.  If you have either one of these versions of Vista, you will need to use the Registry hack below.

1. Open your Control Panel and Swtich to Classic View
2. Open Admininstration Tools, which should give you a list of options.
3. Click Local Security Policy in that list, which should open a new window titled Local Policies.
4. Click Security Options, and double-click User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode  (This maybe shortened to User Account Control: Behavior)
5. Change the settings to Prmpt for Consent to Elevate without prompting in the dialog box that opens.
6. Click Ok to approve the setting.

The last way is a little more tech savy, and needed for some versions of Vista.  You will need to edit your Registry in order to turn the feature off.  Remember you should always back up your Registry before you make any changes to it.

1.  Go to Start and search for Regedit
2.  Expand the following in the Registery HKLM -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Polices -> System -> ConsentPrompBehaviorAdmin
3.  You want to set the key to 0 (2 is the default value) in order to disable the UAC.

There you have it, four ways to disable Vista’s UAC, and hopefully allow you to enjoy your computer again.

Before you go any further, find the file explorer.exe in your Windows directory (default is c:\windows) and back it up to a safe place. Your desktop isn’t a safe place, it may get deleted on accident. Next, download Resource Hacker. The application’s official website is here.

First, lets change that bland Windows logo in your Start button with something more to your style. You will need to find or create an image that is 25 x 20 pixels. This image also has to be a BMP file format. Once you have created or found an image, then you will need to save it in a safe location. Put the image in a folder that you know you can’t accidentally delete it in. A good suggestion would be to put it in your Windows folder, just name it something unique, like my_start_button. Now that we have an image, go ahead an launch Resource Hacker. Open explorer.exe via the File menu. At the left, expand the folder that is named Bitmap then also expand the folder 143. You should see an entry named 1033, click that entry which is the default Windows icon. Now go to the Action → Replace bitmap. You should have the familiar window that opens when you save or you are opening files. Locate the image the bitmap you just found or created, and click the Replace button.

This change will not take place right away. In order to apply the change you will need to reboot your computer into Safe Mode. Save the file that you are working with right now, but don’t save it as explorer.exe. Instead save it as something like edit_explorer.exe. After doing so, reboot your computer. As your computer is rebooting tap the F8 button on your keyboard. If timed correctly, Windows should load a menu which gives you a few options, and one of those options is Safe Mode with Command Prompt. You want to highlight that option and press Enter on your keyboard. You will need to log into Windows with the Administrator account. When Windows loads you should see a Command Prompt, or DOS window for those older users. At the prompt, you will need to browse to the Windows directory. To do this use the cd command and type “cd c:\windows”. After getting to the Windows directory (you will know because the prompt will say C:\Windows>), you will need to replace the current explorer.exe with the edited version of the file which you saved before the reboot. To do this, simply type copy c:\windows\edit_explorer.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe, remember to replace edit_explorer.exe with the name that you saved your file. After the file has been copied, type shutdown -r. This will reboot your computer. When you computer loads Windows again, you should see the new icon in the start bar.

Now that you have your own custom image for the Start button, let us change the boring Start text to something more creative. Find the folder named String Table in Resource Hacker, and expand it. Inside this folder there should be another folder labeled 37. You will need to expand that folder also. There is a entry for 1033 inside the 37 folder, click on that entry. On the right locate the text “Start”, this is the text that you want to change. There isn’t a character limitation, but remember that the longer your text the larger the Start button will be. After you have changed your text, click the button that is labeled Compile Script. Once you do that your Start button should change. If you don’t like the change, you can always change the text again, or change it back to Start.

There is one more thing we can change to the Start button, and that is the text that appears when you hover over it. The default text is “Click here to begin”, but we can change that to something fun like “Click here to unleash the power”. Again, using Resource Hacker, open folder 34, which is a sub-folder of String Table. Next, click on the entry 1033, and to the right find the text that says “Click here to begin” and replace it with the text you want to show up when you hover over the Start button. Once you have changed the text, click the Compile Script button and you are finished. Hover your mouse over the Start button to inspect the changes.

The application that you will need is SG TCP Optimizer. This is a very small application, but is very useful and easy to use. You can download the program here.

Once you have finished downloading the file, you will need to launch it of course. You will see a screen similar to the following.

Next, you will need to use the slider to the speed that your ISP states you should receive in Kbps (kilobytes per second). Since most ISPs rate their speed in Mbps (megabytes per second), you can multiply that speed by 1000 to get the speed in kilobytes. If your ISP says that you have a 10Mbps connection, then you will multiply that by 1000 which gives you 10,000 Kbps. Then slide the slider to the 10000 mark on the scale. Verify that the network card which is shown is the one that you would like to apply the new settings to After doing so just click Apply Settings. TCP Optimizer will then make the changes to your Registry, and even make a backup of your Registry before the changes, in case there are any issues.

I have specified steps below for you to customize your own Windows splash screen. Please, only do this if you are comfortable with modifying system files.

1. Create the graphic that you would like in place of the default splash screen. This graphic can only be in 16 bit color, and in 4 bit bitmap format with of 640 x 480 resolution.
2. Open up your BOOT.INI file in a plain-text editor. In this instance, I will be using Notepad. To edit this, do Start > Run, and in the text-box enter “notepad c:\boot.ini” (without quotes).
3. Go to the last line of the file. It should say something like multi(0)disk(0) etc.
4. At the end of this line, enter the following options: /noguiboot and /bootlogo (omit the ‘and’). Please make sure there is a space between these two options. Once this is done, save the file and exit your editor.
5. Place the bitmap of the file that you created in step 1 in the C:\WINDOWS directory.

Upon your next reboot, your Windows splash screen will be the one that you have made.

Just recently, when I have talked to someone new over at their place and they don’t have cable or DSL, and somehow using it on their laptop, the conversation is somewhat like this…

Once they said that, it came to my mind how many other people are doing this practice? I’m sure there are many others that are most commonly living in an apartment complex and if they don’t have internet, innocently connecting to their neighbor’s or nearby wifi hotspot. You will also see a some people in cars outside of local coffee shops using their internet without coming in for their products.

In a way, this is a form of stealing/hacking at the same time. Think of it this way, you sneak into your neighbor’s house and snatch some of their food while they are not looking. Isn’t this wireless theft the same thing?

This is why enabling WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) or WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) is so important on your wireless router. These protection methods allow you to block outside access to your wireless router by asking for a password that you designate. Without these protocols enabled, your router is wide open for anyone around you to access, and especially if you live in a highly-populated area.

What are your thoughts on this issue?