Howo to go wireless securely....

The best security plan depends on a few things, but after a firewall, the next thing is to set up wireless security. There are different modes, but the simplest is WEP.

• In the wireless administration software on your desktop, look for something that says "wireless security" and that gives you a choice of 'WEP', WPA, RADIUS and maybe some others.
• Pick WEP
• enter a passphrase and 4 different 'key's will be generated.
  
• Pick one of the keys and write it down. You'll need to enter this into the laptop to connect to the router.
  
• Save the changes you just made.

• On the laptop, open the software for the wireless card, and pick WEP.
• Enter the key you wrote down from the desktop
• save your changes.
  

90% of the time this will be all you'll need to do to reasonably secure your home wireless network. The other 10% of the time there will be some troubleshooting, but usually nothing too complex

You should be ok with just this. While the workings under the hood are phenomenally complex, wireless networking is getting pretty straight forward to set up.

Understand that this doesn't make your network bulletproof from snoopers, but there are so many unsecured home networks out there that it's not worth taking the time to hack into one that has even the most basic security. There are also much easier ways of stealing a credit card number if that's what they want.