If you have ever been to a LAN party, you will know how frightfully chaotic they are. Crowds of gamers lug in their 60 pound 19" monitors, 45 pound tower cases, keyboards and mice, then wire them all together in a chaotic spaghetti of LAN fun. Multiply that by 10 players and you have a logistical nightmare.

Now imagine a different sort of LAN party. Ten bloodthirsty gamers calmly walk into a room, sit down, open their notebooks, and proceed to dismember each other virtually. No wires, no monitors and no chaos, other than the virtual kind.

This second scenario is essentially what happened at Sharky Extreme headquarters. Dell brought in four Inspiron laptops and set them on a table. We all sat down, loaded up Unreal Tournament, and had a grand old time. The competition was furious, with all four players holding the top spot at different times. In the end, yours truly ended up on top by three, with Sharky and Player4 running a close second and third. Player4 managed to rack up the least deaths and stay in the lead for most of the game. Sharky's excuse was a failing center mouse button, which stopped him from jumping. Right... Far behind was Godot, who kept threatening to kill us all with his enforcer while claiming to be a real master of FIFA 2000.

All is not fun and games with Dell's wireless solution. For businesses with laptop users, wireless LAN technology can prove very useful. If you have ever been in a meeting where you had something to say but needed to look something up on the net first, you can image how powerful a wireless LAN attached to an Internet gateway can be. With a Dell wireless LAN, you can carry your laptop anywhere within a hundred or so feet of your Internet gateway while keeping all the connectivity of being tethered to a desk. Also, wired infrastructure can be extremely expensive, especially in older buildings. At approximately $139 a card, Dell's wireless solution could represent a reasonable financial solution as well.