In which David rants about his wireless router

Our Internet connection got very slow. Problem was the router. My ISP Earthlink sold it to me years ago. Their tech support used to be stellar, even after it moved to India. But for a long time it's been a disaster.

I called them and they sold me a new wireless router for free, plus a free USB wireless adaptor for my laptop all for signing up for 1 year of $8-month support. Seemed simple at the time. Paid extra for 2 day delivery.

SEVEN DAYS LATER - the box came. The router wired up easily and increased the speed to what testmy.net says is 63% of normal for a Covad connection. "MAY NEED HELP" it told me.

The USB connector they sent was for WIRED connection - USB to Ethernet. Useless.

I don't need wireless - but since I had the router now I wanted to test it. But I had no laptop adaptor. At Best Buy I bought a wireless USB adaptor for $50 more than free. And they sell the same Linksys wireless router for considerably less than my total cost from Earthlink. I feel slightly cheated.

It took me about an hour of computer hell to get wireless working. I wrote this post wirelessly while listening to Fools Paradise on WFMU wirelessly, but dumbly deleted the message when I'd finished it. Be careful what you click.

The moral of the story - listening to 50's Rock and Roll makes overpriced tech support seem unimportant. Doesn't make it better. Check out Earthlink yourself. The router is fine but wireless will stay disabled on my computers.

Stories
Music Reviews
Computer Headaches