Every couple of years or so, I have a major falling out with technology. Usually something goes wrong with my PC to the point of distraction and I spend hours trying to fix it. I have just been through one of those phases at the moment.
It all started when I decided to simplify my setup. I was sick of have computers all around the place and I wanted to ditch the little PC I had in the living room and replace it with a dedicated media server. The idea was that my music collection would be held upstairs on my main PC, affectionately known as “The Beast” due to its sheer size and weight, and this would be beamed wirelessly downstairs to the media server.
This didn’t work out too well and it seems that the media server I had purchased wasn’t actually fit for human consumption and so did a little modification, changed the software upstairs and now it is working. However, to get to this point, I upgraded my wireless network. It is now faster. Whoo-hoo! To accommodate this, I bought a new wireless network connector for The Missus’s PC and one for my laptop. The Missus needed a new network doo-dad because her one was playing up and on the verge of breaking, so no problem there. Because it was Belkin brand adaptor, I bought a Belkin brand one for my laptop.
Firstly, I couldn’t get the damn thing to work with my PC and decided to reinstall Windows XP. I needed to do this anyway, so it wasn’t a problem. When I did get the card to work, the signal strength was minimal. I only got a strong signal when I was sitting right next to my wireless ADSL router. Downstairs it wouldn’t even connect. I tried new drivers, adding a better antenna to my router and searching on the WWW for a solution. Anyway, I’ve reverted back to my old adaptor and I have realised that I have pissed my money up the wall with this particular piece of equipment. I just hope I can get some money back on it from eBay. I should really take it back, but I bought it at PC World and I can’t face going back in there again!
God – that was boring, wasn’t it?