I just use MAC filtering....
But at the place where I often go to work, they've been forced to use WPA due to some new security rule.
Of course public WLAN at airports doesn't use
any encryption - and people are happy enough to use that.
I've noticed a couple of times (at Thiefrow) that a wireless access announces itself as 'Free Public WiFi' - which it isn't. I suspect that it's some spotty geek trying to hack into people's computers?
Off now to see if I can buy a USB 'dongle' at the local Currysdigitaldixon or whatever the hell it's called now....
LATER.......
I bought a Belkin G+ MIMO USB adapter from Currysdigitaldixon. £24.46 seems a good price. Installation of the hardware was an
utter pain though - various complaints and geeky pop ups from Bill Gates and, of course, Belkin don't tell you that you'll need to add the USB adapter's MAC to the client list of your router, if you're using MAC association limiting. I guessed that was the snag I was having with obtaining a connection - and all was fine once I'd actually
found the MAC and added it to the list.
Belkin's own software isn't worth bothering with, so I uninstalled it all and deleted all icons, folders etc.... The USB adapter still identifies itself when I plug it in; the difference being that you don't get all the annoying Belkin pop-ups and extra system tray icons.
It is possible to leave the internal wireless card enabled as well as running the USB adapter - you just get 2 icons in the system tray. Right click and 'disable' if you only want 1 connection.
It found a neighbours WPA router without any problem and prompted me for the passcode, so hopefully it'll do the same when I connect to the WPA-encrypted WLAN next week.