Well, not quite. I set up the cable modem, ethernet card and wireless router, but we don’t yet have any wireless devices. The USB adapter for the Tivo is still in transit, and it better get here soon, or I’m gonna bust some skulls if my Tivo can’t download its information. The airport card for the iBook is on hold until we get some more money.
Setting everything up was not too hard, but not as easy as it should have been. The ethernet card would have been cake if I had pushed it a little harder into the slot right away. It took me three tries to finally snap it in place. Had the cover off the computer for a good 30 minutes, which TOTALLY makes me nervous, as I’m convinced that opening the cover of the computer releases little computer demons all over the office. Yikes. Then the cable modem. Would have gone fine if I hadn’t accidentally stepped on the power-strip’s reset button during installation. Doh. Then the router, which came with possibly the most misleading instructions ever.
The router’s installation instructions are on a CD, so you have to have the computer on to read them. The Installation Wizard guides you through the installation process, which involves resetting the cable modem and then turning on the router. Fabulous, but it doesn’t work. After many, many tries, I open the pdf file with the actual manual. The PDF file, by the way, is corrupted, so I can’t read all of the pages, but I think I can read the ones I need. As it turns out, the computer is supposed to be OFF when you are resetting the cable modem and plugging in the router. Nice. Those crazy folks at Netgear must be laughing their little asses off. Anyway, I think it’s working now, but we won’t find out until we get the wireless adapter for the Tivo.
And after all this, I think I have decided that I prefer writing longhand in a notebook, so I don’t really need the wireless set up anyway. Oh well, at least our Tivo will be online.
