Wi-Fi Routers Rot
In keeping with my recent "Blowing off Steam" column, here's another pet peeve of mine. I love the fact that we have Wi-Fi routers, but I just hate the way most of them work. Initial setup is usually easy: Set your password and choose your style of encryption. Everything is fine 'til something happens, like the power going out, or maybe it just fails. After that, the password disappears, and reconfiguring -- unless you are a network admin -- often requires a call to India.
Oh, and after you've owned the router for a year, it costs the same to buy a new one as it does to get tech support to help you set the old one back up.
For me, many of these problems went away when I gave up the cheap DSL (which is less stable than Lindsay Lohan) for expensive but rock-solid cable Internet service.
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/25/2011 at 1:18 PM