Computer Daze

As expected, today was all about the routers and the computers...

I picked up a new Linksys router ($50) today, hoping to improve life for anyone using Vicki's PC and my own basement monster. Things went swimmingly initially, as I got the router up and humming with my new laptop before tackling Vicki's PC. I knew it would be the challenge, because it's running the oldest O/S (Win2000), but I underestimated just how hard it would be to do something as seemingly-straightforward as changing a WEP key. Ironically, as I was in the midst of struggling with that, a friend and former co-worker came by for a visit who just happens to be an ex-Microsoft employee! When even he couldn't figure out how to change the WEP key, I knew that I was in trouble. Finally, I gave up my plan of improving the security level with this new router, and left it at the lowest setting as it had been with the last router. So much for progress!

After that, the rest of the machines (XBox 360, PS/3 and my basement PC) all went quite easily. Meanwhile, Vicki was testing out her PC, and gave a glowing report of seamless connectivity, after weeks of intermittent problems. I similarly had a great test of my PC downstairs, where I was able to stay connected for 2 hours and counting. Much, much better than what we'd been experiencing in recent months...

Tonight, I had a worrisome encounter with Microsoft Vista (perhaps the first of many). I've always used Eudora for home e-mail (on machines running every version of Windows from Win95 through WinXP), and had installed it on my laptop last night. Things had been looking good until I tried to attach a file to an e-mail tonight (for the first time under Vista) only to have Eudora throw an exception and crash! I tried it a second time, with exactly the same result. A quick search of the Web showed others having some similar issues, but no good resolutions. I saw that Eudora had a "Report Problems" option in it, so I went to all the trouble of typing up a bug report, including getting the versions of all relevant software on my laptop and sending it off, only to get an auto-reply to my e-mail saying that they no longer care because they don't have a commercial product anymore! I guess I won't be using Eudora much longer since it's apparent that it's going to have issues with Vista and beyond, but I've got about 10 years of e-mails in that format that I'm not sure I'll be able to retain much longer. Sigh!

So, all in all... not a bad day, but a somewhat disappointing one. I'm starting to think that continuity with computer technology may just not be possible anymore. The rate of change is good for most things - performance, graphics, new tools - but it kind of sucks when you're required to constantly abandon the old for the new.