In XP is was easy to turn of the wireless. You simply right-clicked on
the
wireless radio signal meter in the task bar and choose to disable the
radio.
It appears to me that in Vista you cannot do this w/o going through about
three windows.

I pin the icon "Wireless Network Connection" of "Network Connections" to the
start menu. Then I can enable/disable it by just right-click it. Of course u
can put that icon on anywhere, say, desktop. Hope that will help you.