Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Three Easy Steps.

The new router at Roseholme Cottage claimed installation in three easy steps:

Step 1. Connect router to modem.

Step 2. Plug router into wall socket.

Step 3. Futz with network settings on VFTP Command Central. Curse some. Try again. Curse some more. Reboot VFTP Command Central. Curse. Turn on eMac. Strangely, six-year-old Mac sees new network just fine without any action on user's part other than hitting the "On" button. Curse Bill Gates specifically. Futz with one more setting on VFTP Command Central. Curse. Start pulling pages, finally. Go to bed in state of exhaustion.

18 comments:

Phillip said...

If it's a wireless router, I hope you secured it.

Eck! said...

I run Linux, Mac, VMS and even the occasional winders.

Guess which one is always a source of major network grief? Yep winders.

Don't reboot.. just boot it, right out the door.


Eck!

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

I run Windows, VMS, Linux, Solaris, even have a mainframe account on a zVM machine my employer still develops for. I cried when I had to stop getting my mail in MailBook ten years ago and I still miss it terribly.

I believe that Apple makes overpriced boutique junque and the only reason I have even briefly considered owning one of their desktop machines is because the company I work for sells software that runs under OS X (among others...although if I recall correctly our actual installed base for OS X, even after being bugged by Apple aficionados for years to produce a Mac version, because they swore up and down that there was a huge market for same, is all of two count 'em two customers, who between them cause us more trouble than any 10 Solaris customers combined).

The upshot of this rant is that I cannot for the life of me figure out why so many people have trouble with Windows. It just works for me, and always has (although I did prudently avoid ME and Vista).

YMMV and probably does.

Tam said...

Nathan,

I am pretty platform agnostic.

I do almost all my computing on a desktop Wintel box, which I keep using because someday I might start gaming again. I use a Linux-powered Netbook for mobile stuff, and I have an eMac as a backup desktop machine/media server/iPod dock.

The fact remains that on the big box, running XP Pro (the same OS I've been using for six years and am quite comfortable with,) it took user intervention to talk with the new router; whether that user intervention went easily or with difficulty is immaterial. The Mac just needed to be turned on.

Ed Skinner said...

Starting at the outside edge of the house, reboot everything from that point inward, and in that order.
I used to try and figure out which box was confused but finally learned it takes less time just to reboot everything starting at the provider's demarcation point.

Borepatch said...

This is because these devices were designed by engineers.

Eck! said...

I'm with you Tam. I Use many OSs heck if you include my DEC legacy hardware theres maybe 20 or more.

Yes, I do have a NT4server box I keep running because it does work 24/7 but
I had to go hard on the apps to get ones that didn't invite and breed security risks. Doesn't do IP smoothly (requires a fixed address!).
I think the biggest problem with winders is it's legacy of legacy support and versions that were highly broken. That and hardware that often runs it is often broken.

The company macbook I use is fine with VMware fusion to run all the
vendor stuff that either requires XP
while development is done under Linux.
I happen to like the user interface.
But, for the price not so much.

Most useful machines I have linux EeePC 701 as it just works, fits in my purse and my Epson PX-8 (antique) because I can run it for 120hours on battery (good for data collection).

The biggest problem is network gear. There is some badly broken wifi routers/bridge stuff out there that tries to do IP but has breakages.
Some of the worst are the cheap vendor supplied DSL/cable/Fios bridge/routers (BRouters) that I've had to run Wireshark on to find the breakage.

But then I'm a hardware software engineer geekette.

Eck!

Rabbit said...

I'm with Phillip. Log into the router with the administrative account/password, and set up whatever previously existing security you had going on the old router (you were using WPKish security, right?) Save, and then reboot the router. Then consider rebooting the computers. If your authentication is the same on the new router as the old, everything will be lovely, they'll all shake hands and say Howdy!.

It may even be a good time to change that security word, if someone was leeching from you previously.

libertyman said...

The difference between the Mac and the PC is illustrated by your tale of the routers. Overpriced? probably. Junque? I don't think so, at least for those of us who don't make a living with computers. I use both platforms, one by choice and the other because I have to. The one I spend my own money on is the Mac.

Stretch said...

We who've worked Help Desks consider Bill Gates
1) The anti-Christ.
2) Provider of full employment.

Larry said...

Tam, WRT networking, I'm a professional. I'd be happy to help if you need assistance with the router. Drop a line to zm9ga2@winux.com and I'll send a phone number where I can be reached.

That e-mail address will be deleted in about a week.

Lergnom said...

At home, our wireless router services Xandros(Linux), OS 9.1, OS X(Leopard) and XP, and recently added an iPad. No grief anywhere.
As I told the Mac, Windows and Amiga techs at work, when they asked my opinion on the best OS,
"I grew up on mainframes. If it's not water-cooled, it's not a real computer."

LabRat said...

Some people just seem to get on with some systems better than others. All I know is whatever the Apple corporation thinks is intuitive never remotely approximates how my mind actually works. It's always an exercise in complete frustration.

That, and the rule with me is that no matter what it is or how stable it's supposed to be, I WILL break it, and therefore how I appraise it is how things go once I break it. The Windows machine will assume I'm either more technically gifted than I am or have access to someone who is and offer me cryptic breadcrumbs. The Mac reminds me of the Pakleds from Star Trek; "IT IS BROKEN! :(" Yes. Yes, I know it is broken. I would like to have a chance to fix it without doing the Walk of Shame to the rent-a-geek, please. GIVE ME A HINT.

....Not that Tam actually wanted this comment thread to be a platform war of any type, I'm just bitching.

Ruth said...

My dad swears by Linux and only uses Windoze when he has no other choice (his spelling) to the point where when he had a computer still running an older version of windows with DOS the command to return to windows was "lose" on all his computers....

JC said...

Setting uaid "contqct Redmond"p a home sys (nothing big, one WinXP, one Redhat and one Mac) the only one that couldn't find the router wasw the Mac. Local ISP support said contact Apple. The pimply (I could hear the damn pustules over the phone) tech rep asked if I were using OSX (available at thtw time for about 20 minutes). On hearing the answer NO, he said and I quote"Get a new computer, grandddad" and hung up on me.

Rabbit said...

Heh. I get a kick out of talking to newbie junior admins. I've seated memory modules on servers using a two by four and a hammer. When I start talking about Bell Labs UNIX, Thompson and Ritchie, and PDP7's, they whimper and run to Wikipedia.

Anonymous said...

As a practical consideration, if it isn't secured with WPA2, consider it unsecure. WEP and WPA have been broken.

Jim

Gewehr98 said...

Tam's quad-Xeon IBM workstation actually was water-cooled before it arrived at VFTP. I just didn't know how to ship the rest of the gurgly bits her direction, so I put the heatsinks and fans back in. At some point, I may box up the rest and ship it with a fresh bottle of coolant.

Sorry to hear about the netconfig problems, Tam. Apple is somewhat better in doing such things, even I'll admit to that.