Old laptop wi-fi

[lost eden]

I recently acquired an old Toshiba Tecra 8000 (P2 233MHz, 128MB RAM, 4GB HDD) for schoolwork. As most of the school (well at least the bits I have classes in) now have wireless network coverage, I bought a wi-fi PCMCIA card (my first order from Scan with free shipping no less).

The machine is running Windows 98SE (for speed reasons, 2000 would run too slowly) so I'm worried about security. I want a firewall, so firstly looked at zone alarm because I've used it in the past. However the minimum specs are a 450MHz pentium, & bearing in mind that these are minimum & not recommended, it would probably slow this 233 to a crawl. So I looked at kerio, but that isn't available for 98SE. The same problems arose with at least 3 others.

Bearing in mind that I am a careful person who well understands the security problems of Windows, do I actually need a firewall/virus checker (especially considering that the school's net connection goes through a hardware firewall first). Are there actually that many virus risks for 98 anymore, because surely the largest target is XP?

So essentially I need advice on how/if to secure my laptop, whilst bearing in mind the specs.

[BEANFro Elite]

Well, I also have a fossil of a laptop, I have an IBM ThinkPad 560 (100MHz, 48Mb, 755Mb HDD).

I used to use it for listening to my .mp3's through my PC and playing old retro games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels.

But what I'm getting at is that I also used ZoneAlarm on it and until you just mentioned it, I had no idea what the minimum system requirements were, I didn't notice any lagginess as a result of using the firewall in question.

I'd recommend you download the trial first and see if its too drainage (if at all) for your liking before you buy it...but I can honestly say the Wi-Fi card I used was more drainage than ZoneAlarm if there was anything drainage.

[lost eden]

Actually my dad had a recent copy on the machine in his bedroom so I copied that across. And you're completely right, it really doesn't slow things down at all. It slows down the boot up, but I've got it set so that it doesn't automatically start so I can just start it when I'm actually gonna go online.

I'm writing this from a friend's bedroom using the wi-fi card that arrived yesterday, firefox (because its a lot more lightweight than my normal favourite of Opera) with Zone alarm on, & its perfetly fast. I don't think I'm gonna bother with virus checking on this machine, because I'm far careful enough. Besided, I can just get my Linux machine to check its drive across the network if I really want to.

Thanks for the hands-on advice.

[TheAnimus]

i would say this laptop is such a risk of DoS style attacks.

If you have the spare computers it might be worthwhile hiding it from the net completely, mabye allow HTTP access via a cache.

m0n0wall is a great firewall, will run happily on an old box, i love it.

[peterb]

If you are using it at school, and your school's internet connection is via your local education authority's portal, then you should be pretty safe while you are using it there - BUT if you use it elsewhere, you will be at risk. Talk to your school's IT administrator if you have one. The same risks apply if you use it to dial up to the internet from home. Get something like Zone alarm and an AV checker if you are using it for e mail.

[lost eden]

Yes, I am essentially only ever going to use it at school, through the school's hardware firewall & filtering, & then through Warwickshire Educations precautions. I tested it out at Rugby High School today (luckily there were at least 10 unsecure points so I didn't have to waste time finding techs & asking for WEP keys - they seem to trust you at a girls' school). It ran perfectly fast with Zone Alarm turned on. I haven't tried it at Lawrence Sheriff School, the sixth form centre has WEP & I haven't asked for the key yet, & I haven't investigated the other areas of the site yet.

I don't plan on doing any wardriving & just walking around town stealing bandwidth, mainly because the battery only lasts half an hour (its dieing).

[TheAnimus]

asking for WEP keys, the way i see it is WEP means they want you to access it as much as unsecured APs

I'd run NT4 on there personally.