Ever noticed how much Windows just sucks at times? Every now and then (ok, it happens a lot), my wireless connection goes bad. It's still showing a signal, but it's not communicating. I do something with the WEP code to disconnect and reconnect with the router. About half the time, that essentially crashes Explorer (not IE, but the basic Windows desktop). The taskbar "disappears" then reloads. Or, the fact that so many programs require a reboot when you install or uninstall. The only time Linux generally requires a reboot is if you change the kernel. But back to a Mac. One of our IT guys apparently has one at home now, and brought up the point that OS X essentially has a Unix (or is it BSD? I forget) base underneath everything. That could be very interesting. Of course, I hope this desktop hangs on for a good bit longer..
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
Comments
Microsoft finally realized this as they started working on Windows XP, and they started the whole signed driver thing, but that only goes so far. I suspect your wireless card has half-baked drivers (not at all rare in the windows world) that crash Explorer. Check to see if they're WHQL certified. If they're not, complain.
Microsoft's done more to make sure one bad driver can't crash the entire system, but it only goes so far. Linux has less of that, because most hardware companies aren't writing their own drivers -- Linux developers are, and they write better code than crappy OEM makers. Install a junk video driver in Linux, and it will be just as unstable as Windows XP with a junk video driver.
A half-baked wired NIC/driver is what got me into this wireless mess on this box. The original card/driver can't handle high amounts of BitTorrent traffic very well -- it would routinely give me BSODs. Even after changing drivers, to the one directly from the card manufacturer, things crashed. I had a wireless card I planned to put in my Linux box. But it's a Linksys card with a newer chip that has no Linux driver (you have to use driverloader or something like that to use a Windows driver under Linux). I gave up on that for the time being, and put it in this computer. As a result, I have a 50 foot ethernet cable running to my Linux box, and a wireless connection from my computer to the router that's just inches away.
I had a half-baked Netgear router that choked on bittorrent traffic over WiFi. The wired portion would keep working, the wifi would die until you power cycled it. I'm so done with Netgear.
I got the Linksys WRT54G and it's been much better. Occasionally it starts handing out duplicate IP addresses and needs a reboot, but far less often than the Netgear.
The second possibility is your old half-baked drivers are still around somewhere causing problems with your new linksys drivers... sadly, the best solution for that is to wipe and reinstall windows, unless you can track the individual files down and erase them.
The router is Linksys, too. The usual 802.11b one, I think it's BEFW11S4, ver. 4)
And just as I was about to post this, something in my connection restarted itself. It could have been the DSL (wasn't really paying attention), but I think it was wireless.
Macs are built on a Unix (I believe it's Unix) base, so you get pretty hardware and a pretty interface and still get to do all of your fun command-line stuff natively (and don't have to install extra programs to ssh or whatever like on Windows). I'm actually surprised more nerds don't have Macs, because they're so nerd-friendly. :-) (It also comes with stuff like PHP, Ruby, and Apache already installed.)
i have a mac. an ibook g4. i LOVE it. i used to have a piece of crap compaq. it would just turn off on me when it felt like it. same thing for the windows computer i had before. (i forget which that was.) anyway, i LOVE my mac. i have only had a few problems with things freezing. by the time i had my old laptop, it had already crashed on me. so that whole apple world is making me happy...and keeping me that way.
now, i'm in no way a computer person or a technology person. but from personal experience, i will NEVER go back to another pc with windows again. i have my word and the other office programs i need on my mac. and i'm just dandy with that.
as for the safari comment, i don't use safari. i use firefox. it freezes occasionally. but not as often as firefox froze on me with the old computer.
and by the way, i saw your miami u. / u. of miami entry - i fully agree. i went to good ol' mu. i HATE when people get it confused. that's why they always have to put up the (fl) or (oh) during games. because people aren't smart enough to figure it out. on my brother college graduation ring (which was many years ago) the stupid ring people put "university of miami" on it. they had to send it back and wait forever to get the one that had "miami university." i swear.
anyway. good luck with your computer issues.
I hopefully have another year or two before I have to think about replacing my computer. I've added a hard drive, more RAM, and a DVD burner, so it's keeping up fairly well. Just Windows is stupid at times.
I can't believe someone would have screwed up a college ring! Did he get it through a company that took orders at the school (Artcarved did ours, I think, Jostens was there too), or someone else?