Do you belong to the growing number of UK households that now have more than one computer?

You may have a PC in a child’s bedroom, one in the study and a laptop in the lounge.

And you might find that your home office itself needs more than one PC terminal (if it’s your own business, you might even recruit another member of staff who’ll need somewhere to work too).

If so, then you should be looking at networking – installing a home network which lets you share printers, files and even one internet connection among all your computers is now quick and simple.

Setting up a home network is easier and cheaper than you might think. You will need to invest in a 'hub’ or 'switch’ that connects everything together, either by wires (in the case of standard Ethernet) or an access point, which allows machines to communicate via radio waves (in the case of wireless Ethernet).

If you have the Windows XP operating system on your PC, you just need to plug the wired connections or your wireless network cards into the back of all the units being networked and click through the instructions which will automatically launch on your PC screen.

Ethernet network cards are the most popular choice for wired networking because of their low price – but it can be a problem to physically run all the wires through your home.

Wireless networking is becoming more and more popular in the home, because it offers all the benefits of networking without the need for lots of extra cabling.

To get yourself set up with wireless, all you need to do is:

	Buy a wireless access point and attach it to your outgoing cable or DSL modem/router.
	Buy a wireless card for each computer on the network.
	Buy wireless cards for peripheral machinery on the network (printers, all-in-ones), or connect them to a wireless router using network cables. Alternatively use a model which has built-in wireless capability.