Laptop at home

[Anastasia Q. Sailer]

I have verizon dsl at my house and I have no idea how to use my lap top at home at all. Is there anyway to connect it to the interent with that blue cord at my house instead of using wireless? Thanks for your help

[Paul R. Coen]

Originally Posted by Anastasia Q. Sailer

I have verizon dsl at my house and I have no idea how to use my lap top at home at all. Is there anyway to connect it to the interent with that blue cord at my house instead of using wireless? Thanks for your help

Not sure about verizon, most people I know are using cable rather than DSL. I have seen a recent Verizon setup that didn't require anything to be done on client PC's - you just plug in, once the DSL modem/router is set up. That may not work with some of the older modem hardware, and depening on where you live - Verizon (formally GTE) is done differently than Verizon (formally Bell Atlantic), at least. I suspect Verizon (formally NYNEX) might be different again. If you have a wireless access router/switch (with or without wireless) set up, you'd certainly only need to plug in with the blue CAT5E Ethernet cable (or use wireless).

As a general note, I wouldn't recommend trying to install software to hook up via a USB port, and whatever you do, don't allow ANY software to change or follow any directions that tell you to change or put your computer in a Windows workgroup, which would remove it from the DREW-AD (ad.drew.edu) domain. Once you do that and reboot, you won't be able to log into your computer, because it'll delete your cached network credentials off the machine. A lot of home networking products include tools or instructions that lead people to do this. You don't need to be in the same Windows workgroup to share a printer with another computer (the usual cause of this mistake). If you call Verizon for help and they try to tell you to change the domain/set a workgroup, please lie, say you did it, reboot the computer (without changes) so it takes the right amount of time and then move on from there.