Dwight Silverman just set up a new PC for his parents. It’s the thankless job that all geeks do; in fact, I think Dwight was really smart to get this over with now, so he can enjoy the holidays more.
One aspect of the setup struck me in its absence, and I asked about it in the comments section of Dwight’s original post. Did he enable the security settings on the folks’ new wireless router? Yes, but only the old and very weak WEP instead of the newer and more secure WPA and WPA2 standards.
I don’t knock Dwight for making this choice. Setting up WPA is still too hard, and it can take a long time to get all the hardware talking properly.
Two years ago, around the time that Windows XP SP2 came out, Microsoft announced a standard called Windows Connect Now, which was supposed to make it ridiculously easy to set up WPA security with a USB flash key. So far, though, only one router supports the standard, D-Link’s DI-624S. And it doesn’t work as advertised.
There is a workaround that allows you to use the wizard and a flash key to set up WPA on a network even when the router doesn’t support the standard. I’ll try to post those instructions later this week.
Meanwhile, shame on the router community for not making it easier to turn on effective security.
Ed Bott 
I say shame on all the vendors for the lack of security and interoperability specifically in the wi-fi arena. Its something that should be much simpler, but putting the interest of making money and getting the product out there first – seems to be tops on the vendors lists.
Chuck
Come on Ed, how are all those Help Desk people supposed to make a living if we can do it all ourselves? Every time I have set anything up on my wireless network it has meant at least a 30 minute call. 25 minutes of that was on hold, of course.