It is one thing to move from a Powerbook to a Dell. It's another and even scarier thing to give up on Apple's Airport. But I've done it.
My wireless network has, for the last several years, been built around Apple's Airport technology. When I got the Dell Inspiron 6000 two weeks ago, I was using an Airport Extreme base station with an Airport Express ancillary access point (in the living room, so we could play music from iTunes to our stereo). Although the network hardware was Apple, the Dell was able to get on the Internet without any difficulty.
But afterwards, I began to think that perhaps I should switch to a non-Apple wireless router, for a couple of reasons. First, Apple's Airport Extreme and Airport Express hardware has to be configured from a Mac. It would be nice if I could configure the network from the Dell or, indeed, from any machine running any operating system, using a Web browser. Second, I've been told by the tech folks at Speakeasy.net (our top-notch Internet access provider) that, perhaps because we're so close to the central station, we should be getting a great signal, and that we should notice how good it is because Web pages should leap open. I've not often complained about the Web, but I wouldn't say pages were leaping open, either. Third, I was hoping to get a router that had a better firewall built into it than the Apple base station seems to have.
Tim at Speakeasy.net suggested that Linksys might be a good choice for a mixed-platform network, so on Saturday I tried a Linksys router. I couldn't get it configured. I concluded that the problem was mainly with the "wizard," which, to my mind, was simply terrible. Right from the start, there were options available to me that weren't clearly identified as options. Up at the top of the wizard's screen, there would be a description of what was about to happen, followed by a button labeled Next. Then, down below the Next button, there was a description of something else, with another button. There were many such confusions in the wizard. Anyway, after an hour of frustration, I gave up, reconfigured the Apple network, and put the Linksys back in its packaging.
Last night, I found an old (2002) Macworld review of non-Apple wireless routers. The review rated a Netgear router tops, so today I took the Linksys back to Frye's and exchanged it for a Netgear model.
The Netgear wizard was hardly better than the Linksys one. The "read me first" piece of paper in the router's packaging suggests that you set the router up but says explicitly that you should not plug it in immediately; instead, you should insert the installation CD and follow the instructions. One of the first screens displayed by the installation "wizard" observed that I was not connected to the Internet. Well, duh. That's what the wireless router was for, and I had not yet been told to connect it to the computer or do anything else. They really need to test their wizards.
Anyway, this time I decided to try Netgear support. A nice fellow with a heavy Indian accent told me to plug in the router's power cable, and also to connect the router to my computer's Ethernet port (with an Ethernet cable, obviously). So I did. At this point, I gather that the wizard was supposed to be able to sense an Internet connection, but it couldn't. Eventually, the support guy told me that the problem seemed to be with my Ethernet port and he suggested that I call Dell.
So I called Dell. A nice lady whose Indian accent was less noticeable than the Netgear guy's, helped me update the driver from my Ethernet port, by doing a download from Dell's web site. That fixed the problem. After that, I was able to enable the port, type in the default URL for the browser-based configuration pages, and configure the router manually. I never did actually use the so-called wizard. I'm now connected to the Internet using the Netgear router.
Couple quick notes about all this.
First, I just have to observe that I almost never have to go to this much trouble to install something from Apple. The last time I had serious trouble with a Mac installation was about a year ago, when a Canon scanner (that I purchased from the Apple Store here in Dallas) wouldn't install or work until I'd spent an hour online with a Canon support guy. But the problem here wasn't just with the hardware, it was mainly with the wizards that were supposed to make things easy. The installation wizards for the Linksys and the Netgear routers were, by Apple standards, terrible. The options are badly presented, the instructions are inconsistent, and the feedback that you get when there's an error is useless. And of course if you step away from the wizards thinking, I've got the info I need, so I'll just configure everything manually, well, Heaven help you. The Windows XP control panels are a labyrinth of dialogs with mysterious options. What is a QoS Packet Scheduler and does it really need to be enabled? What's the difference between an access-point-preferred network and an access-point (infrastructure) network, and which should I use?
Second, the tech support folks for Netgear and Dell were patient and helpful and did, in fact, get me to a resolution of my problem. I think the Netgear guy should perhaps have considered asking me to check the driver for my Ethernet port. But I'm grateful both to Netgear and Dell for having support folks available on Sunday afternoon.
Third, now that I've got the Netgear router configured, my network is once again working fine, and indeed, I think it does seem zippier than it did before. Pages actually do seem to leap into the browser window now.
The hardware in the PC world seems to me to be pretty good. Not sleek and sexy, but certainly functional. And some of the applications I use - Picasa comes to mind - match Apple's standards for user friendliness pretty well. But boy, anything that has to do with configuring the computer is lousy. Networking has always been something of a black art, and wireless networking is twice as bad as the old-fashioned kind. It doesn't need to be so hard! I'm available to any company that wants help writing a wizard that's truly user-friendly and easy to use.
