I've had it with wireless!

[Dan Schultz]

I've just returned from two weeks of vacation. There were 13 nights in 13 different hotels with at least 11 different wireless connections. My laptop configuration is so screwed up I can connect to my own network here at home. My router is fine and the wireless card seems to be working OK. I've gone into my configuration files and made some changes and eliminated all the old wireless networks but whatever I do results in screwy messages. It's probably got something to do with the encryption that was installed when the 'Geek Squad' originally did the installation two or so years ago. I'm now connecting to the router with a cat5 cable. I'm due for a new laptop but don't plan on replacing it until after the 1st of the year.

I'm going to get rid of the wireless setup and just use the box as an ethernet hub. Does anyone have any experience with wiring the cat5 receptacles?

[Dan Schultz]

two words:

System Restore

I tried that. Even though there were at least two restore points per week for the last month... Windows failed to do it... and gave me a dialog box indicating that it couldn't use the date I selected. I tried five or six dates ranging from a month off to yesterday and got the same message.

Did I mention that besides 'wireless' that I also hate Windows?

Screw it! My internet connection works just fine using a cat5 cord plugged directly from the computer to the router. Tomorrow I buy a 100' patch cord for $20 and move back into the front room! I like hard wires anyway.

The more I think about it, my wireless card may have gone south or perhaps something is messing with the router wireless signal. At any rate, I'm going back to cables.

[Dan Schultz]

two words:

System Restore

Three words:

Get a Mac!

I have traveled all over the US with my laptop and can get onto any free Wi-Fi hotspot I can find.....

I have no problem connecting to wireless systems and it's all done automatically (without having to click through a bunch of screens). The problem is that every time a computer connects to something different, 'tracks' are left on the computer. I suspect that there is also a bunch of crap accumulating on your MAC, too... that will eventually cause problems. Wireless still sucks!

[k001k47]

\whatever I do results in screwy messages.

What messages?

[Dan Schultz]

Dan, try turning your modem off and then re-start it. I have to do this periodically with my DSL modem. It wouldn't be a bad thing to do the same with the router.

I'm no stranger to disconnecting the modem and router to reset them. That's THE FIRST thing I try whenever there are problems.

Naw... to heck with the wireless. I've got a 100' cable coming! In the meantime I'm just stuck within 9' of the router.

[Dan Schultz]

\whatever I do results in screwy messages.

What messages?

Just a message saying "Windows could not restore to the date selected and no changes have been made". It also advises to "pick another date". Windows sucks but it's still better than a MAC!

[k001k47]

Turn everything off wait a minute, turn back on, and then try again.

Maybe your computer is still trying to connect to an old network.

[Dan Schultz]

Turn everything off wait a minute, turn back on, and then try again.

Maybe your computer is still trying to connect to an old network.

Yep. That's what was happening. Apparently one of those 'networks' changed all of my wireless settings and I wasn't able to connect to my old wireless at home. Be the time I was through 'thrashing around' on my laptop computer, I had deleted all of the old networks including the 'home' one that the 'Geek Squad' installed for which I could not find the paperwork to find out what the old settings were. My only option at this point is to do the install again. But.... apparently there is still something in the Windows registry that is hanging on and keeps screwing things up.

Like I mentioned... I'm due for a new laptop anyway. At this point a nice long cat5 cable will fix things nicely. When I originally had the wireless installed, I had visions of using the connection at several places... shop, kitchen, porch, etc. But... I've never used it anywhere in this house except for one room. Wireless is useless here. Cables are good.

[eupher61]

Cat 5 is relatively easy to terminate. Be sure to use one of the two standard wiring patterns (these are included with the plug ends), but you do need a tool to do the termination.

I'll trade you my termination tool for lifetime repair work...

[TMurphy]

I'm with Wade. I have a Mac Mini (desktop), and my girlfriend has a Toshiba Laptop running Windows Vista. When I lived at home, I was wirelessly connected to my parents wireless signal. At college, I was also hooked up Wirelessly. Now, here at my apartment, I have another wireless network setup, and all I had to do was select it from the menu, input my password, and I was in (not entirely true...I had to input my machine's MAC [Machine Address Code] into the Router's setup menus so I could access it...only because I opted for extra security). Setting up my girlfriend's laptop was a NIGHTMARE. No matter what we tried, it kept trying to connect to her old network. She was on an ethernet cable for 2 or 3 days before we sorted it out.

Fact is, all the old stand-by reasons that PC people have always used to trash Macs are gone. Macs are very stable (more so than Windows, for sure...I have not once seen the "crash screen" on this Mini, and I've had it for 2 or 3 years). The new ones are obscenely fast...faster than comparably priced PCs, and the "software" gap has narrowed substantially in the past few years, to the point where you can get pretty much any PC program for Mac as well, with few exceptions.

If you're comfortable with your PC and don't feel like learning a new system, that's fine. But I made the Mac switch about ten years ago, and I haven't looked back since.

[Rick Denney]

My solution will be to (no, I haven't done it, yet) put a partition in it and install Ubuntu (Linux - FREE).

Been there done that. My solution to being unable to install anything on the Ubuntu side (the instructions for installing anything were always wrong and always required detailed knowledge of the OS and how to recompile the kernel) was to actually buy, for actual money, a copy of XP. Now, everything works.

If all you do is browse the web and maybe type an occasional letter, Ubuntu is fine. If you want to install anything, fuggedaboutit. I was building a computer for the motorhome. I could not install the touchscreen drivers (even the ones supposedly for LInux), and forget doing navigation on a Linux box. And if you need support, you'll be forced to browse through forums where beginners are treated with disdain by Unix gurus/professionals who expect average people to know how to recompile the kernel, etc. For the problems I had with Ubuntu, I got precisely ZERO help from the Ubuntu forums. And I'm not a beginner.

Another example: I had problems setting up the fonts used in my various Office-created documents so that they would be used in the Ubuntu version of Open Office. The essence of the Linux experience is that the process for making new fonts available for printing is different than making them available for viewing.

And Ubuntu, which is supposed to be so hardware-friendly, locks up on a formerly Vista box when running from its own hard disk. It may take a day; it may take a week. But it always locks up. So much for stability. I've run XP on my machines at home for literally months without a cold boot.

The new Mac is just a Linux box without the open architecture. They make it easy by limiting choices. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does not meet my needs. I don't want to be forced to think the way Steve Jobs thinks I should any more than I want to be forced to think the way Bill Gates thinks I should, however long it has been since Apple's advertisement actors have shaved.

But Microsoft is doing everything in their power to force people to these other options. Vista is a nightmare, and I have not talked with ANYONE, from our IT pros down to our systems integrators, who can make decent use of it. It's less stable, the protections are nannyish, and long-standing applications break under it.

Dan, I use my wireless connection all the time, and probably now have 50 different networks in the accumulating library. Any time one automatically connects, I disconnect it, which sets it to manual. That prevents future automatic connection, except for the connection you have set up locally. I have connected to wireless networks in hundreds of hotels.

Rick "who expects more from his computers than playing on the Internet" Denney

[rocksanddirt]

my wireless experience is more like Rick's, no problems with networks all over.

though I've had no real problems with vista, and xp (at work) blows. (though that's as much a function of our it dept's restrictions than anything).

[Dan Schultz]

.... Dan, I use my wireless connection all the time, and probably now have 50 different networks in the accumulating library. Any time one automatically connects, I disconnect it, which sets it to manual. That prevents future automatic connection, except for the connection you have set up locally. I have connected to wireless networks in hundreds of hotels.

Rick "who expects more from his computers than playing on the Internet" Denney

Rick... the problem isn't/wasn't my computer. I needed to reset my wireless stuff here at home and was stupid enough to not have written down the encryption codes (or at least I couldn't find them when I needed it). My wireless still works just fine when 'on the road' and everything works automatically. Until I bite the bullet and replace my five-year-old Dell, I'll just use a cat5 here at home. I don't want to spring for a bunch of new stuff here at home... and I don't want to take the time to reconfigure the old junk I have.

I'm certainly not relishing the idea of having to deal with Vista. BTW... a friend visited a couple of weeks ago from Ossnabruck, Germany. He is a retired Microsoft Business Systems troubleshooter who still works seven days a month as a consultant. XP is still available there for use on personal PCs.... and will be for some time to come. Why do you reckon MS is cramming it down our throats here in the US?