Laptop Saga Continues
My laptop saga continues. Thursday, I received my new Sprint U300 modem. This is the modem that will enable me to take advantage of Sprint's upgrades to its data network. When finished, a person using this 4th generation card will be able to get WiFi connection speeds anywhere. For now, it's limited to certain areas like Baltimore. I figured since I needed to get a new card, I might as well get this 4th generation card so I could take advantage of the upgrade when it became available. Plus, I travel down to Baltimore occasionally.
The card arrived in fine shape. I read the directions on what I should do. I summarily installed the software and drivers that were needed for the card. Then, I rebooted my computer. After that, I attached the card to the computer. At this point, the program was supposed to activate the card itself. It didn't. I called up the menu on the program options and clicked activate. Nothing happened. I managed to find a phone number you could call for assistance with activating the card. They hung up on me twice. Finally, I called Sprint Customer Service. They kept me waiting for over 20 minutes. When I did get to speak to someone, it was very knowledgeable and took me through the steps to activate the card. They didn't work.
The next day, I took the card and my computer to a Sprint store in town where they could try to get it to work. After over an hour at the store, they told me I had a faulty card. I'd have to call for a replacement and send back the faulty card. Crap! I was able to get them to reactivate my old card so I could connect to the Internet. That's how I'm able to post this. So, I'll have to wait 2 or 3 days for a new card and try again. Hopefully, the new card will work. Until I can get on the Internet, I can't begin to get my new laptop up to speed. So, it sits it its new backpack. I may take it over to Panera so I can try to access their WiFi connection. I've wanted to try that for a while and, that would enable me to start installing various programs off the Internet like Firefox. We'll see.
That concludes my latest chapter of my laptop saga. I still have hope I can start to get things working on my new ultra computer. We'll see. Stay tuned.
2 comments:
dang! I haven't been keeping up with your blog like I should! You've had a lot going on!
So does the computer have an internal wifi card and you're just using the Spring card to get connection anywhere?
It does have a built-in internal WiFi card. I haven't gotten to try that out yet. I plan to sometime. I haven't forgotten about your blog about Panera offering free WiFi access. It's just a matter of getting over there with my laptop.
The Sprint card is the main way I hook up to the Internet. I don't use a dial-up or cable modem. I've been very pleased with their PCS Connection cards (barring the problems I've had with the faulty one they sent me). They've enabled me to hook up to the Internet any where in the country (I even connected while in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands). I plan to take my laptop with me during my Globus U.S. tour and post updates while on tour. I'm going to look into posting from Canada too. They may charge me extra for that. We'll see.
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