Adventures in Technology

Recently I mentioned that I have been working to bring my mother into a somewhat more modern era of computing. She has been slogging away with dial-up internet access while my brother, who lives in the same house, has high-speed cable internet. As far as I can determine, the only reason they did not extend this to my mother's computer is because it would have involved additional wiring. It may also have been because my mother's computer is circa 2000 and runs an older version of Windows, doesn't have much memory, and is painfully slow in general.

The main reason this came up is because my mother has been looking for a job, and she has come across places that will only accept emailed resumes, and various other technological hurdles. I was about to buy her an inexpensive computer, but when I mentioned this to a friend, he said he had just bought a new one and offered me his old one. It already had a wireless card installed, which meant that all I needed to do was add a router to my brother's computer, no extra wiring needed.

I decided I wanted to get an LCD monitor to go with it, because they use less energy, take up less space, and are easier on the eyes. A couple of days of searching on craigslist resulted in a 17" LCD for $100, and the seller even came to met me about 95% of the way between his house and mine. I test-connected everything and it all worked fine.

The next step was purchasing a router. Normally I am fairly competent in the area of technology and consumer electronics, and am comfortable making such purchases. But in this case I was a bit in the dark, because I have been a Macophile for more than 15 years and I am (somewhat intentionally) ignorant in the ways of the dark side.

(I tried to convince my mother to get a Mac back when she purchased the ill-fated HP that I was endeavoring to replace, but at the time she said that already knew her way around Windows and didn't want to have to learn the differences. This time I again considered trying to get her to switch, but decided that a free computer, even a Windows one, was worth making the best of, and having had jobs where I used Windows, I knew that XP was somewhat friendlier than the older versions of the operating system.)

I asked a few people for suggestions, including the friend who had given me the computer, the IT guy in our office, and a couple of others. Every one of them said the same thing: get a Linksys router. That amounted to a convincing endorsement. Normally I would buy this sort of product online, but there are times when it seems like it would be easier to just go to a nearby store and get it, and this was one of those times. Or so I thought.

A quick check on PriceGrabber and a glance through the flyers in the Sunday paper showed that most places sell the Linksys WRT54G for about $50, which seemed fine to me. So a week ago Saturday we headed out to get one, intending to drive down to my mother's house in Rhode Island the next day to set everything up. I had seen the router in the OfficeMax flyer for $50, so I told the Mrs. I wanted to go to OfficeMax. To her all office-supply stores are the same, and she thought I meant I wanted to go to Staples, so she drove in a different direction.

I decided it wasn't worth our time to try to go back the other way, figuring it would not make any difference which office superstore I bought the thing from. But when I got to Staples, I found that they were selling the router for $70, $20 more than most other places. I did not have the OfficeMax flyer with me, and generally that's the sort of proof required in order to get a store to price-match, so I decided to buy a different router instead of taking the time to go to a different store. (I'm pretty sure that stores count on this sort of behavior.)

The next day was a Sunday, and the Mrs. wasn't feeling well, so we postponed our trip to RI. While looking through the Sunday paper, I found that Staples had the Linksys router on sale for $50 for the week. I decided not to think about it, lest I become angry about it all over again.

During the course of the week I happened to be discussing the project with a couple of other people, and I was told that the router I had bought was bad news, and I should return it and get the Linksys. We had to go right past Staples to get on the highway, so on Saturday I went back. Of course, they were out of what I wanted. We had decided to make a slight detour to get some pastry at Lyndell's in Ball Square, which took us near a second Staples. Guess what was also out of stock there? I was ready to return my original purchase out of sheer disgust and annoyance, but the line was too long, so I decided to suck it up.

When we got to my mother's house, my brother opened the router box and found that the ethernet cable that was supposed to be included was missing. That was pretty much the final straw. Fortunately there is a Staples about a mile from my mother's house, and fortunately they had the Linksys in stock. It turned out to be very easy to set up, and the "new" computer recognized the newly created wireless network immediately. In fact, the connection seemed faster than my own cable internet service at home (which could be due to the number of users in my neighborhood, but I have no way to know for sure).

So the story had a happy ending, and I think we all learned a valuable lesson: don't buy anything at Staples, ever.