Hi - I am considering giving up my tel. landline and going wireless...

[Ralph]

...through a smartphone on my laptop using...? ...gmail telephone service.

Another reason is because I have heard about cloud computing (dropbox, sugarsync etc) and accessing all my files from anywhere either from a smartphone or my laptop would make this possible ...

...but I am concerned that wireless is unencrypted which makes possible unwanted access by others to my network.

And affordability.

Do you know of or are familiar with this type of networking/internet access and know issues & resolutions to these concerns?

Any comments/suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[warren]

To secure your network, just make sure that you have encryption enabled on your wireless network. This will prevent others from using your network access. Google Voice will have their own encryption on the information sent using their service.

Google Voice is free for now for calls to Canada and US but they may start charging at the end of the year. If you find that their charges would be too much you could just use your smartphone and upgrade your smartphone plan to something that will suit your needs in the future.

Cloud computing is great, but don't underestimate the value of having local files. I would recommend keeping master copies on your computer or flash drive and backing up regularly to an online service. This will come in handy when you need to work on machines that do not have internet access.