Wi-Fi Rookie

I'm happy to report that I'm now on the Wi-Fi bandwagon. Mary already has it working at her place. I spent a tedious but ultimately fruitful afternoon getting it to work at my own place.

If you haven't already heard, Wi-Fi is an acronym for wireless fidelity. What it means to a techie homebody like me is this—no wires to connect to the internet!

Now, my place is not big. Still, I like the option of being able to watch a movie on my laptop in bed and quickly switch to IMDB.com to learn a little more about a particular actor or get a quick update on the Red Sox.

More importantly, my place can be much neater now that it's not dependent on the odd location (the middle of the kitchen wall!) of my internet connection. Instead, I can park my netgear there and have my computer elsewhere. Ahhhh.

Since I'm geeking out here, let me sing the praises of NetGear. This will include a discordant note about Linksys.

Today, I tried to use Linksys for the second time. The first time, over a year ago, the Linksys router simply died on me after less than a year. Back then, I had no interest in using it as a wireless device. I simply pulled cables into it.

This time, I tried to go wireless with it. It took me through a long installation process only to end up killing my internet connection.

Rubbing salt in the wound was Best Buy, from whom I had purchased the router. The salesman told me it would cost $50 to get it set up if I had any trouble. So, off I went to my home to do the set up. Wasted hours and another road trip later, the guy at the Geek Squad desk said help would cost me well over $150. I don't think it was a bait and switch but it felt like one. More likely, the sales guy just screwed up. In any event, I was not happy. End of sale. Gimme my money back.

On the way home, I decided to give Staples a try. It was a long shot, since local Staples help, especially on techie stuff can be spotty. But, then, it's spotty everywhere. Genuinely good techs are hard to find. Lo and behold, I found one!

Given my bad luck with Linksys, I opted for Netgear. This time, I got another failure message but immediately. This was, oddly enough, progress. This made it clear that the installation CD was messed up. Specifically, the message was "Ethernet card defective"—that is, the card with which I was able to connect to the internet successfully without Netgear.

So, on another long shot, I call the Netgear support line. Wonder of wonders, I got a live person in under 5 minutes! Her Indian accent was a little thick and hard to decipher at times but that was minor compared to this all important fact—she knew her stuff!

In short order, she had me toss out the CD. That was replaced with a Netgear site that worked directly with my Netgear router. She guided me expertly through the setup steps successfully.

As a bonus, she helped me secure the Wi-Fi network so my neighbors couldn't tap into it. For this, Best Buy was going to charge me $150...on top of the $100+ for the hardware. Instead, Netgear handed me the knowledge gratis, as an integal part of the router installation.

So, in my book, Netgear rocks! Linksys? Not so much. Best Buy? From now on, I'll give Staples the first shot.

P.S., For $25, I was able to connect an old, pre-Wi-Fi era computer to Mary's Wi-Fi network. This gadget the size of some new car keys plugs into a USB port and voilà—wireless internet connection! Nice!