Re: Tiscali ... Follow up ...

The Caretaker wrote:

B-I-L has little to no computer experience, he's very remote from me so everything is being done third-hand and any instructions I give him need to be as easy to do as a very, very easy thing to do.

Whew, what a day.

As luck would have it, we went to visit bil yesterday, arriving at 2.30pm. Looked over his systems and found he needed a laptop pcmcia card or usb adaptor to get one of the laptops wireless compatible. Went to PC World (about 1/2 mile away and bought cheapest system they had http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/459034 'cos bil is seriously pikey. :) I wish he'd taken my advice and spent more ......

What a bloody palaver getting it installed, nothing worked properly, nothing was straightforward and only one laptop (with it's built in wireless connection) worked anything like expected and smoothly. Everything we installed or used Linksys software on (main PC with linksys webadmin page, and laptop with pcmcia card and wireless software) didn't work properly.

Before installing we had stopped every app running, closed AV, firewalls, stoppped windows security etc etc.

In the end we re-installed one laptops XP system completely and had so much messing about with the Linksys wireless software that we uninstalled the thing completely and just used the drivers, then used wzc.

Other laptop with built in wireless, hence no linksys software, was fine.

Then we started to add security, after it was all running fine, but openly. That's when we really started with problems and lack of detailed instructions. Jeez, but why don't all softwares use the same bloody names for things as everyone else? Key codes, authorisation codes, generated codes, passcodes, passwords, keywords, so many different names for same/similar things that it was completely confusing. Also, why do they only include the bare minimum of setup sheets with pictures and arrows, but _don't_ include details of what you're doing, why you're doing it and a glossary ?

Eventually finished it all with a robust, reasonably secure, system up and running at 8.30 in the evening. ;(

I cannot seriously recommend anyone to use Linksys ***, especially their software.

Ah well, worth it in the end to see the nieces happy. :)

--
The Caretaker .........
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