Your Opinions Please!

Hello Everyone,

In the interest of complete transparency, this is not my problem. I write a tech advice column and unfortunately don't do a lot of field work outside of my office space. Which ofcourse.... always works.

(jk... if so I wouldn't have a job)

Seriously, it is still a relatively controlled environment at work. So i'm going to post a question I've recieved just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Heather

btw - If it's against the rules to helping a sister out, I understand and won't be offended whatsoever.

Question:
I have a Dell inspiron 5160 laptop. We travel quite a bit and I wanted to use it when we were on the road in various motels. At home we have a linksys router and a card so that I am able to use it on a different floor and in various rooms. I have never been able to get it to work in a hotel or motel, even the ones that say they have wireless in all rooms. What is my problem? Can it be corrected?

 

Well, they don't say exactly what happens. Can they see the wireless connection when they are in the motel? And their laptop won't connect to it? Or do they not see the connection at all? They could have it set to automatically connect to the one set up at home. They would have to have it look for the signal in the hotel and then click on it to connect.

 

Yep, you can see what makes my job so difficult! Sheer lack of information.

I suppose I'll just walk them through 'how to connect to a wireless network' along with a short lecture on security.

My husband and I were also thinking that sometimes there are wireless programs that will try and connect for you and disable windows from handling the connection. So I might walk through uninstalling that too.

Well, thanks a lot!

It helps me tremendously to kick around ideas. I welcome any thoughts from anyone else too!

Heather

 

I have also seen some hotel networks that do not allow 802.11b access. Probably not intentional but solved when going to 802.11g.

 

Good Call!

Thanks Jersey. (Hey, I'm from Morristown)


For anyones geeky pleasure, a quick study of the IT Project lifecycle.


http://www.scaryideas.com/Cartoons/ITProjects/project_1.5.html