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robotech_masterAnd now it's time for Wi-Fi WTFs!
Working tech support as I do for a well-known computer-repair company (at one remove, which is why I'm not allowed to mention their name—my actual employer doesn't think their client would be happy if it were bruited about that they subcontract their phone hotline), I tend to sort of get a concentration of the greatest technical stupidities going around at the time.
I'm not referring to the people I help on the phone. With the occasional exasperating exception, these people are not stupid. They're of average to good intelligence and undoubtedly know many things in their own fields of expertise that I would have no way of figuring out myself.
I'm talking about things that companies do, either by accident or on purpose, that I have to help customers figure out.
The Wi-Fi Switch
If you don't own a laptop or netbook these days, you're probably not aware of this, but all laptops have a way to toggle their built-in wi-fi cards on or off. There are good reasons for this—it saves on battery power if you're not plugged in, and you're not allowed to have radio frequency transmitters operating in such places as airplanes taking off or landing, and some areas of hospitals.
The problem is that there's no really standardized way of doing it. A lot of companies put it on one of the F1-F12 keys, painting a little stylized picture of a wi-fi antenna or satellite dish on the key in question and trusting the user to puzzle it out. (Asus often uses F2, HP usually uses F8, etc.) Usually you have to hold down the "Fn" key at the lower left corner of the keyboard while pressing the F key in question.
WTF #1: For some reason, some companies set their computers up so that by default, pressing the F key without "Fn" activates the secondary function, and you have to press the Fn key to get the "ordinary" F key press. What kind of sense does that make? You could have an ordinary user going along and pressing some particular key to bring up a function in his program, and accidentally turn the wi-fi off (or change the volume, or activate whatever other alternate functions the F keys are assigned). It also makes it easier to turn the wi-fi off by mistake with just one keystroke.
WTF #2: Some companies put the toggle in other places, such as buttons above the keyboard (which sometimes just look like little indicator lights, and I have to tell the caller that it's a touch-sensitive button to push. Depending on how hard it is to find online documentation for that particular model, and how good the caller is at describing what he sees on his computer, it can sometimes take me a while to come to this point). But the big WTF prize goes to Sony, who puts a wifi switch on the front lip of their computer, below the keyboard, in a place that's not only hard to describe over the phone but also hard to find for the average person. (It's amazing how many times I have to keep telling people, "No, just keep looking down there for the little switch that says "WLAN" next to it," until I hear an expression of pleased surprise.)
Which means nobody knows it's actually there until I call it to their attention, and it's easy for Sony users to turn it off completely by accident, just by rubbing or bumping that part of their case against something while opening, closing, or putting it away.
To make matters worse, laptop manufacturers don't like to be bothered to spend extra money on little extras and frills like a printed user's manual. If you're lucky and you get a manual at all, it's buried in the "Help" section of the start menu somewhere. Even if it is there, and even if the average new laptop owner could be bothered to hunt for and read it, it may just tell you how to turn the computer on and what some of the function keys are, and not fill you in on unimportant little matters like how to turn your wi-fi on or off.
What it boils down to is that a lot of laptop owners can turn their wi-fi off by accidentally touching the wrong spot on the keyboard or case, leaving them completely mystified as to why they "don't have the Internet" anymore. By now it's second nature to ask people who say they can't get on-line whether they have a laptop and are trying to connect via wireless, and if the network connection icon says "Not connected, no networks are available." If so, then I go try to look up where their given manufacturer likes to put the switch and get ready to try to talk them through it.
If I'm lucky, it goes quickly and easily enough that the caller is amazed and delighted at how clever I am. If not, it can sometimes become an ordeal.
(And on a related note, a lot of those same switches can do things like disable the touchpad, but the icons are stylized enough that it's hard for the average person to figure out what they are. And on some HP laptops, you can disable the touchpad just by touching it in the corner too hard! Oy.)
Why, WiMax, Why?
But a special WTF goes to laptop manufacturers—Asus and Sony that I've noticed so far—that are starting to build WiMax, a next-generation form of long-range wireless broadband, into their laptops. Now, having WiMax built in is not a bad thing; it gives people more wireless connectivity options and means they could subscribe to "4G" services like Clearwire without having to mess with an external WiMax modem or USB dongle they could easily misplace.
But what wins these manufacturers the booby prize is that the computers are set up that only one of wi-fi and WiMax can be turned on at one time—if one is on, the other is off—and guess which one is enabled by default?
(Here's a clue: almost everybody has wi-fi, while relatively few people live in a Clearwire service area and fewer still of those people actually want to use Clearwire, at least not right off the bat.)
I keep getting calls from people who can't connect to their wireless, and whenever they try they get this Clearwire login page but they don't use Clearwire. (If I'm lucky; at least that lets me know what the problem is. If not, they just can't get on at all and pressing Fn-F2 doesn't seem to do anything. Except, oh, wait, it ways "WiMax On" or "WiMax Off"…)
And it's not a simple matter of toggling this with a hardware button. The hardware button just turns WiMax on or off without affecting wi-fi. They have to go into a special pre-loaded application from the laptop manufacturer to switch between WiMax and wi-fi so the hardware button will toggle wi-fi instead, and I have to somehow talk them through finding this application without having the faintest clue of what the icon actually looks like.
As hard as it is to get these people to find the application and turn on wi-fi in the first place, I find it hard to believe that they managed to turn it off accidentally before calling me, the way they could with a wi-fi switch or button. So the laptop manufacturers are apparently shipping their laptops with the wireless option everybody uses turned off, and the one relatively few people use turned on, by default. Maybe Clearwire pays them to do it, I don't know.
Working tech support as I do for a well-known computer-repair company (at one remove, which is why I'm not allowed to mention their name—my actual employer doesn't think their client would be happy if it were bruited about that they subcontract their phone hotline), I tend to sort of get a concentration of the greatest technical stupidities going around at the time.
I'm not referring to the people I help on the phone. With the occasional exasperating exception, these people are not stupid. They're of average to good intelligence and undoubtedly know many things in their own fields of expertise that I would have no way of figuring out myself.
I'm talking about things that companies do, either by accident or on purpose, that I have to help customers figure out.
The Wi-Fi Switch
If you don't own a laptop or netbook these days, you're probably not aware of this, but all laptops have a way to toggle their built-in wi-fi cards on or off. There are good reasons for this—it saves on battery power if you're not plugged in, and you're not allowed to have radio frequency transmitters operating in such places as airplanes taking off or landing, and some areas of hospitals.
The problem is that there's no really standardized way of doing it. A lot of companies put it on one of the F1-F12 keys, painting a little stylized picture of a wi-fi antenna or satellite dish on the key in question and trusting the user to puzzle it out. (Asus often uses F2, HP usually uses F8, etc.) Usually you have to hold down the "Fn" key at the lower left corner of the keyboard while pressing the F key in question.
WTF #1: For some reason, some companies set their computers up so that by default, pressing the F key without "Fn" activates the secondary function, and you have to press the Fn key to get the "ordinary" F key press. What kind of sense does that make? You could have an ordinary user going along and pressing some particular key to bring up a function in his program, and accidentally turn the wi-fi off (or change the volume, or activate whatever other alternate functions the F keys are assigned). It also makes it easier to turn the wi-fi off by mistake with just one keystroke.
WTF #2: Some companies put the toggle in other places, such as buttons above the keyboard (which sometimes just look like little indicator lights, and I have to tell the caller that it's a touch-sensitive button to push. Depending on how hard it is to find online documentation for that particular model, and how good the caller is at describing what he sees on his computer, it can sometimes take me a while to come to this point). But the big WTF prize goes to Sony, who puts a wifi switch on the front lip of their computer, below the keyboard, in a place that's not only hard to describe over the phone but also hard to find for the average person. (It's amazing how many times I have to keep telling people, "No, just keep looking down there for the little switch that says "WLAN" next to it," until I hear an expression of pleased surprise.)
Which means nobody knows it's actually there until I call it to their attention, and it's easy for Sony users to turn it off completely by accident, just by rubbing or bumping that part of their case against something while opening, closing, or putting it away.To make matters worse, laptop manufacturers don't like to be bothered to spend extra money on little extras and frills like a printed user's manual. If you're lucky and you get a manual at all, it's buried in the "Help" section of the start menu somewhere. Even if it is there, and even if the average new laptop owner could be bothered to hunt for and read it, it may just tell you how to turn the computer on and what some of the function keys are, and not fill you in on unimportant little matters like how to turn your wi-fi on or off.
What it boils down to is that a lot of laptop owners can turn their wi-fi off by accidentally touching the wrong spot on the keyboard or case, leaving them completely mystified as to why they "don't have the Internet" anymore. By now it's second nature to ask people who say they can't get on-line whether they have a laptop and are trying to connect via wireless, and if the network connection icon says "Not connected, no networks are available." If so, then I go try to look up where their given manufacturer likes to put the switch and get ready to try to talk them through it.
If I'm lucky, it goes quickly and easily enough that the caller is amazed and delighted at how clever I am. If not, it can sometimes become an ordeal.
(And on a related note, a lot of those same switches can do things like disable the touchpad, but the icons are stylized enough that it's hard for the average person to figure out what they are. And on some HP laptops, you can disable the touchpad just by touching it in the corner too hard! Oy.)
Why, WiMax, Why?
But a special WTF goes to laptop manufacturers—Asus and Sony that I've noticed so far—that are starting to build WiMax, a next-generation form of long-range wireless broadband, into their laptops. Now, having WiMax built in is not a bad thing; it gives people more wireless connectivity options and means they could subscribe to "4G" services like Clearwire without having to mess with an external WiMax modem or USB dongle they could easily misplace.
But what wins these manufacturers the booby prize is that the computers are set up that only one of wi-fi and WiMax can be turned on at one time—if one is on, the other is off—and guess which one is enabled by default?
(Here's a clue: almost everybody has wi-fi, while relatively few people live in a Clearwire service area and fewer still of those people actually want to use Clearwire, at least not right off the bat.)
I keep getting calls from people who can't connect to their wireless, and whenever they try they get this Clearwire login page but they don't use Clearwire. (If I'm lucky; at least that lets me know what the problem is. If not, they just can't get on at all and pressing Fn-F2 doesn't seem to do anything. Except, oh, wait, it ways "WiMax On" or "WiMax Off"…)
And it's not a simple matter of toggling this with a hardware button. The hardware button just turns WiMax on or off without affecting wi-fi. They have to go into a special pre-loaded application from the laptop manufacturer to switch between WiMax and wi-fi so the hardware button will toggle wi-fi instead, and I have to somehow talk them through finding this application without having the faintest clue of what the icon actually looks like.
As hard as it is to get these people to find the application and turn on wi-fi in the first place, I find it hard to believe that they managed to turn it off accidentally before calling me, the way they could with a wi-fi switch or button. So the laptop manufacturers are apparently shipping their laptops with the wireless option everybody uses turned off, and the one relatively few people use turned on, by default. Maybe Clearwire pays them to do it, I don't know.
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Similar WiFi experience
Date: 2010-12-05 08:57 pm (UTC)I had a friend in Springfield ask me at a meeting how much it would cost to add a WiFi unit to her laptop. I looked incredulously at her for a moment or so and then flicked the WiFi switch to 'on' and said "That will be $20.00, please!" She had had the laptop for over a year and lamented its lack of WiFi.