rants @ 17 Feb 2008 11:42 am by bigfish
I try to avoid using Windows because it tends to drive me nuts. My OS of choice is Ubuntu 7.10. It has its problems but I can usually enter an error message into Google and find an answer to my problem in about two minutes. Try that with Windows. If you have a few hours to spend you might be so lucky.
I’ve been at Shmoocon the last couple of days, playing vendor. (More on that in a moment.) When in DC I like to stay with my friends David and Sally and their kids Molly and Ella. They have a nice old Steinway upright though I played it (badly) for only about 10 minutes. But I digress.
David is a huge music fan. He’s got about a million CDs, who knows how many songs on iTunes, and a Sonos. First time I’ve seen a Sonos and I wouldn’t buy one, but that’s just me.
The wireless router they’ve been using for years, a Netgear, had been dropping connections. Having had the same problems with a Netgear router that I was using, I thought we’d try installing a new router, but a Linksys this time. I’ve had pretty good luck with Linksys routers, though that may be just luck.
Regardless, Sally picked up a new WRT54GS which offers better security — WPA2 with AES encryption. We set everything up and finally got everything to work. I configured it for WPA2 with AES. (The Linksys CD wouldn’t run but the web management is just fine.) Mac OS X 10.5 handled WPA2 just fine, Windows XP SP2? You guessed it. Good luck.
Having just gone through the same headache with a router I set up at my mother’s, I knew that XP required a download in order to offer WPA2 support. I went to the download page, ran through their genuinecheck software (phew! we’re genuine!), then installed the patch. Rebooted and what do you know. Nothing’s changed. I tried it again and the same thing. Something is broken and who knows how to fix it. Maybe if I had a couple of extra hours I could.
Actually, now that I’ve had some time to think about this, I’m guessing the problem isn’t the patch but the wireless card itself. It probably needs a firmware upgrade in order for it to support WPA2, so I’ll check with my friends about that. But regardless, my question is this: Why isn’t the WPA2 patch included in Windows XP automatic updates? It’s not like XP can’t be made to support WPA2. Clearly it can. So why should I have to think to look for it? Isn’t Microsoft taking care of me?
Apparently not, and the only reason I can figure is that they want people to dump their perfectly good machines (this one is a Pentium 4 but it’s fine for ordinary use — just needs some more RAM), and go out and get a Vista machine. I bet Vista supports WPA2 and, if it doesn’t, I bet the patch is included in an automatic update. Time to go to the dump to retrieve those perfectly good, dumped machines!
In closing, let me just say that I don’t dislike Microsoft quite as much these days. Not because of this headache but because they’ve got their head so far up their you know what that I just have to feel a little compassion.
As for Apple, they make pretty machines, but if they had Microsoft’s money they’d probably be 10 times worse.
Wow, talk about a biased article.