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April 15, 2004

Going wireless ain't no fun!


Last week, or say two weeks ago, I bought a D-Link wireless B card for my good old junk laptop to enjoy the fast-expanding network of wireless hotspots in our beautiful Bay Area. The Palo Alto Library was my first Wi-Fi testing place, and my card simply could not connect to the network. Then I went to a friend's house and tried to connect to their wireless Internet which did not happen either. We tried their neighbor's wireless connection (Secure Thine Wireless Network if you don't like intruders!) and we couldn't connect to it either. So, I called a good old friend of mine a few days later and invited him to the Palo Alto Library. He has a way too cool Gateway centrino laptop which could go wireless in a second with its integrated b/g adapter. But when we inserted my precious D-Link card into its weird PC card slot, it could not connect to the Internet either. "What a royal pain," I said. "What a waste of money and time," he replied.
Then we went to the Fry's Electronics in Palo Alto and I returned the D-Link card, bought a Linksys instead and it worked fine. But wait, the story is not finished yet!
The next day, I bought an Airlink wireless router for "home" for $19.99(Good Deal, folks…Good Deal!) and everything worked at home but when I went to the Library, nothing did work. Then I fixed the problem and when I went back home, it did not work there and the good news is that I could not fix the problem at all. So I went to the Library the next day, thinking that I would return the damn wireless card again if it didn't work, but it worked there fine.
The moral of the story: There are 631 hotspots in and around San Francisco (very close to the number of hotspots in entire Canada or Taiwan) but if you want to go wireless here, first you've got to go absolutely nuts!

April 15, 2004 04:59 PM

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