I have a first generation iMac, you know those futuristic ones in all those different colors and a nice see through casing ....anyways...my friend was at my house before and he caught a bunch of wireless Internet signals with his laptop from my neighbors.
Talking to them it may be possible that they are willing to share their wi-fi signal with me - but I have no idea what hardware to get in order to get my iMac wireless ready and what additional software I have to install in order to use a signal to browse the web on my iMac without having pyshical access to their routers.
My friend is a PC person and has no clue but is literate enough to install something, follow your instructions :)

Thank you so much for replying
Lucy

The earliest iMacs are not capable of built-in wireless, but
the later models were. They use an Airport card and a
special adapter to hook the card up internally. If you go to
the upper left corner of your screen and click on the Apple
logo then down to "About this Mac" it will bring up a
window that will have your CPU speed listed on it. With
that info we can determine if your Mac is capable of using
an internal wireless set-up.

All the iMacs have USB, so you are able to use an external
USB wireless adapter/dongle. Make sure you get one that
says right on the box that it is OS X compatible. Or you
can get a wireless ethernet bridge or wireless gaming
adapter. The advantage of most wireless ethernet bridges
is there are drivers to install, and they work on any
platform.

I'd like to know if you have ever found a solution to setting your Mac for Wireless. I have the same situation. My building has wireless, but my Mac is old (333/G3 tray-loading, too old for putting in an airport card)

Thanks.

Gini