Travel Light. And Take Your Mac.

by David Parmet Mar 27, 2006

Under pressure, that’s where our Macs shine. And for pressure, nothing beats dragging three kids, six suitcases and two laptops through two airports on our way down to Florida to visit Grandma and Grandpa.

Those of you paying attention, or just stalking me, remember the ThinkPad? It looms large in this tale of traveling woe.

Both my wife and I are busy entrepreneurs on the go. And as I mentioned last week, three kids require as many vehicles for entertainment media as possible. So it’s not even a question, we’re a two laptop family when we travel.

So arriving at the jetBlue terminal at JFK - free WiFi signs all over the place. Guess who got online with no trouble at all and guess who spent the better part of a half hour trying to connect with her office email? OK, so I’m in serious trouble here but what can I say? I just opened up Firefox and there it was ... a “you are online, sucka” graphic and then the jetBlue website.

I similarly got myself in deep doo doo at the hotel. Since this hotel has a wired connection, we decided to take the Airport Express base station with us.

A technical note…  It’s not all easy-peasy, that is unless you have already set your Airport Express as a base station. I set ours up merely as a means to play music on our stereo. So word to the wise, read the manual. Otherwise you’ll be scouting about your hotel room looking for a pen to do a hard reset.

So after some fiddling with settings, the light on the base station turned green and I was good to go. Not so for Mrs. ThinkPad. In my infinite wisdom, I set the network up as ‘closed’ and slapped a password on it. A simple password yes, one that my wife would know considering she carried said password around in her womb for nine months.

But no, her ThinkPad doesn’t like closed networks nor does it like our kids’ names. So tip number two for the week - Windows machines take stuff like WEP encryption and network keys way too seriously for their own good.

So with that all solved, you’ll excuse me as we’re off to my parents’ house so the kids can play with Grandma and Grandpa while I spend the better part of the morning figuring out why my Mom’s computer won’t print.

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Comments

  • I’m not going to deny that one of OS X’s powers is that it knows exactly what kind of wireless card it’s talking to inside the Mac.

    I also will admit that most of Windows’ problems lie within other hardware and software. But considering Windows users are encouraged to buy 3rd party devices for the OS, and Windows’ boasts to support them, then that is what it should do - this is where Windows fails as a product.

    Luke Mildenhall-Ward had this to say on Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 299

  • Again, I ask that you simply apply this standard to OS X.  For example, I bought a firewire/USB external drive, which Apple boasts that they support, and the firewire on the drive doesn’t work.

    Now, I thought that was a failing of the drive, but I see now that this is where OS X fails as a product.  Right?

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 2220

  • I was applying the same standard to OS X. In regards to Wireless.

    Luke Mildenhall-Ward had this to say on Apr 05, 2006 Posts: 299
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