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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Kim Komando

Aired August 18, 2002 - 10:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Time now to separate the bits from the bites, the LANs from the lambs, and all that stuff. For that, we go to the one and only national talk radio host. You also have a newsletter, Kim Komando.
KIM KOMANDO, NATIONAL TALK RADIO HOST: Hello.

O'BRIEN: Kim, you've got an absolute geek empire going, don't you?

KOMANDO: Well, I wouldn't say empire, but it's getting close.

O'BRIEN: Yeah, not bad. All right, we've got a lot of great e- mails. A lot of your fans out there, as a matter of fact. Many of them expressing great support and thanking you for their help. Let's get right to it.

Question is: "Once you have a network set up, how does each computer connect to the Internet? Can two computers on the network connect at the same time, to different sites? If not, is there other equipment required? We have a network set up to use two separate dial-up ISPs at the present, but we're expecting the kids to move back home, and I'm looking toward a satellite hook-up instead of more phones lines." Sandie Russell in San Antonio has a complicated mess, Kim.

KOMANDO: Boy, I'll say. You know what, there's a whole bunch of questions wrapped into that one little e-mail. So let's just start with home networking. If you have more than one computer in the house, it's a good idea to network them all together because then you can share files and printers and all those gadgets and gizmos, and then also you can share the Internet access. Because what's really cool is if you have like a broadband connection, one of those always- on Internet connections, whether it's going from cable or DSL or satellite, if you have that one line coming into the house, you can set up what's called a wireless network, or even an Ethernet-based network. Like in my home, for example, we have a wireless network. And so when the pipeline comes into the house, getting real technical here, is that you put up a little hardware type of router.

O'BRIEN: No, we understand pipeline. We get that.

KOMANDO: OK, cool. So you have like this little box that's called a router or a hub, which also, by the way, can act as a firewall. Very, very important for one of those always-on Internet connections. And then you have...

O'BRIEN: Otherwise, somebody can come in and pillage your files willy-nilly, right?

KOMANDO: Well, they can get in there and maybe you can get a virus or maybe somebody can put a program on there that can access the files on your computer. And speaking of firewalls, you can buy one from Norton for example, or there is a free one called Zone Alarm. If you have Windows XP, your firewall comes in. But the thing about the Windows XP firewall is that it only blocks the data coming in for some reason, not the stuff that could be leaving your computer. So even if you have Windows XP, you still need a firewall.

O'BRIEN: Yeah, it was interesting. To set up my DSL at home, they made me disable that. I don't know. You might know the reason. I don't know.

KOMANDO: Well, it could be conflicting with maybe some of the other stuff that they have configured.

O'BRIEN: I think so. Yeah, it was. It was a big conflict. All right, Enigma has this, though, this is a good follow-up to this, Kim. "Doesn't the wireless network leave you open to people who can eavesdrop on you, allowing them to see everything going on on your computer?" This is a frequent question, isn't it?

KOMANDO: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, there's a whole underground movement called War Driving. Get this, people will drive around with their laptop computers and with a Pringle's like can device hanging out the car window to see what kind of wireless networks they can access.

O'BRIEN: Oh, for gosh sakes, get a life, people. Really?

KOMANDO: Exactly. And then if you're ever walking around the streets and you see like two circles, right, and then a line through it, that's called war chalking, and that tells all these geeks of the week that like to do the War Driving that they can hang out here and surf the Internet.

But if you do have a wireless network, you do need to lock it down. It's very important.

O'BRIEN: No, wait a minute, wait a minute. You breezed that by, two circles and a line?

KOMANDO: Yeah, there's like two half-moons and then a line through it. That's called war chalking.

O'BRIEN: And that's on the what, sidewalk?

KOMANDO: Yeah, they put it on the sidewalk, they put it on a building.

O'BRIEN: Interesting. KOMANDO: It's almost like high-tech graffiti, if you will.

O'BRIEN: Catherine's done a quick graphics representation. We'll get a close up of it from Dee (ph) in just a moment. All right. That's good to know. So there is a real security issue. What do you do to thwart that effort?

KOMANDO: Well, you have to lock down the network. And inside your wireless settings, there will be ways for you to lock it down. It's not very complicated. You just have to go into the preferences and set it up. But a lot of people avoid that step, and that's something that you should never do.

O'BRIEN: OK. So that's an important point. All right. Thank you for the graphics support, Catherine, we appreciate that.

Ash has this: "I'm in the process of setting up a network at home. I have quickly become overwhelmed from the different options available, their costs and complexity. Is this a secure medium? How does it compare to wireless?" They were referring, I edited a portion of it out, one of the issues is these power line networks. What do you think of those?

KOMANDO: You know, the power line networks are a lot better than what they used to be. Get this, a couple of years ago, if you had a power line network and if somebody turned on a microwave or like started drying their hair, all of a sudden the network would go down. So it was not definitely a good thing.

O'BRIEN: Not quite ready for prime time there.

KOMANDO: No, not at all. But it's called the home networking standard. And it's working. It's not as fast as, say, the older types of networks, like the ones that use the Ethernet connections, those cat 5 cables. And that still seems to be -- it's the older technology, but it's pretty fast.

O'BRIEN: Of course, you know, what's great is while you're at the office, you can microwave a burrito, because your microwave is on (UNINTELLIGIBLE), right?

KOMANDO: Absolutely. See, all this stuff all built into one.

O'BRIEN: It would be great, the perfect world. Already, Bill Sparks in Missouri has this: "I recently purchased an Apple Powerbook along with AirPort for wireless connection. I'm very pleased with it so far. I've connected the AirPort to my ISP. I am now in the process of setting it up to a local network, having a few problems." Any big suggestions here for Bill?

KOMANDO: You know, when you start talking about networking issues, you have to look and see, make sure all the connections are valid, make sure all the ports are open. It's -- you know, once you start getting into trouble with a network, that's when you want to visit the manufacturer's home page, and there they'll have something called FAQs, and you've got to love those. Those are frequently asked questions. And as I tell the listeners of the "Kim Komando Show," odds are if you have the question, so does somebody else. And so if you go to, say, Apple.com and you start searching through the FAQs, I bet you the solution will pop up right there for you.

O'BRIEN: All right, Kim, let's shift gears a little bit here. This is one that comes up for a lot of people who work with laptops. "I have a notebook computer running Windows 2000 Professional. I use it for home and office work. The machine has one network card. When I'm at the office, I have to change the IP address, and then back home I have to change it back again. Is there any way I can avoid changing IP and the Gateway settings and the winds (ph) and all that stuff?" This is from John in Cambridge.

KOMANDO: You know what? That is a nightmare. I used to suffer the same trouble. Because when you're at home with the Internet connection, you have one setting, when you get to the office, it's a whole different one.

O'BRIEN: I live it.

KOMANDO: And but I'll tell you, if you upgrade to Windows XP Professional, one of the things that's really cool is it has something called a network detect. And what that means is that Windows will automatically say, hey, you're at your house, or hey, you're at your office. So what you want to do is upgrade. Just bite the bullet and buy Windows XP Professional, which, by the way, has some other cool things built in, that if you do a lot of work away from the office, it has something called the remote desktop, so you can access all your files from wherever you are to your office computer.

O'BRIEN: All right, but what happens if your folks at the company, it's a company-owned laptop, say I'm sorry, that's not authorized?

KOMANDO: You can work through that. I mean, they'll have to permission you through the firewall.

O'BRIEN: Oh, so they could do it?

KOMANDO: Yeah, they could do that.

O'BRIEN: All right. Here's another one: "I was getting frequent messages on Internet Explorer about upgrading the version that I had, and so recently I downloaded IE 6.0, and now the computer won't boot up. It gets as far as the Windows ME screen and won't go any further. I can hear the processor running constantly, as I was trying to do something, but it just won't come up. I've tried to register restore, I've tried to reinstall Windows ME. Nothing has worked. Can you help me?" This is from Kendall Lindahan.

Kendall, I would tell you, I've had terrible experiences with Windows ME. How about you?

KOMANDO: You know, Windows ME was something that I don't really think -- I think Microsoft probably could have passed that version. But if you're having trouble ever doing a complete restore, what you want to do is try to restore to a fresh directory. That's a brand new directory. So when you put in the disk, it will say c:/windows. Maybe you want it to say c:/windowsnew, and then have all those files reinstalled through a fresh new place, and then see if that works. And then if it does work, and odds are it does, is that you'll be able to go ahead and delete the old files.

But if you're having trouble starting up, it could be a number of things, maybe not even related to downloading Windows Internet Explorer.

O'BRIEN: Could have been just a coincidence.

KOMANDO: Yeah. I mean, who knows what else this person could have had?

O'BRIEN: All right, Kim Komando, thanks very much. Enjoyed it. Great to see you in person. Enjoy your radio program, enjoy seeing your stuff on the Web as well.

KOMANDO: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. My pleasure.

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