Connected wirelessleee

My wireless connection problems are (almost) over. The folks at Asus offered all manner of laborious solutions to the notorious “pending …” problem on my Eee PC, and they even took it back for repair. Nothing worked – I simply could no longer connect to my WiFi router using WEP security.

I was left with a simple choice. Either forget the Linux operating system it came with and buy a copy of Microsoft Windows, or change my broadband router to one which offered WPA security. A third option was to give up altogether on wireless connectivity.

So I decided to replace my SMC Barricade with a Netgear RangeMax WPN824 wireless router. Unlike the Barricade which has two “rubber duck” antennae, the WPN824 has seven. They are all neatly concealed inside the body, but Netgear clearly decided that this was too discreet. So the design incorporates a circular blue translucent dome containing around the circumference seven lights which flash manically in demonstration of their claim:

The antennas continuously scan your home or office, automatically sensing obstacles and electronic interference, then dynamically adjust the wireless signal to compensate and maintain a clear connection.

The thoughtful Netgear provide an on-off switch for this pointless mini light-show which quickly gets a bit distracting.

After a couple more precious hours of my life spent fiddling with cables, connectors and setup screens I was relieved to get a wireless connection to my netbook once more.

I am not out of the woods yet, however. The Barricade had a handy parallel printer port which the RangeMax does not. So now I have to work out how to hook up the printer – which probably means buying and fitting another parallel port. Aargh!