Plug And Pray: A Wireless Experiment Goes Awry

from the not-so-good dept

Mon, Oct 21st 2002 2:10pm — Mike Masnick

I spent much of this weekend pulling out my hair trying to figure out why my new laptop wasn't connecting properly to the internet. I finally "isolated" the problems to such an extent that I realized it was really a convergence of four different, incredibly ridiculous problems, which were all working together to make my life hell. Dealing with the wireless aspect of it was the least of my problems, which ended up leaving me tethered via a short ethernet cable to my router. It seems that for all the hype about how wonderful wireless access is (and it is wonderful, when it's working) it's still quite a pain to get it set up properly. In the article linked to here, a lot of the problems seemed to be the fault of whoever set up the "wireless access" at the conference. It still amazes me that any conference can be set up these days without full WiFi coverage.

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Marc Nathan, 22 Oct 2002 @ 8:23am

Wi-Fi Hell
I spent the better part of last night (missing the entire football game no less) setting up my already working 802.11b laptop to work with my brand new wi-fi access point at home. Plug-and-Play only works when manufacturers write drivers that work, which is an afterthought to selling the hardware. Even the "updated" drivers on their website wouldn't even install properly. I just wish that Microsoft would start using their magic monopoly powers again to keep these hardware vendors in line.
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