WI-FI NIGHTMARES

When Wi-Fi works like it should, it's sheer bliss. You can surf the Web from the sofa, stream music while you check e-mail in your home office, and get updated stats on your fantasy baseball team while you watch the action on your laptop out on the deck. New wireless routers and laptop PC Cards are more user-friendly than ever, taking only a few minutes to configure. The latest MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) and Wireless N products make computing even more enjoyable with faster speeds and incredible range.

 

Yet, for some, that enjoyment and wonder eventually turns to bewilderment. Sometimes you get poor signal strength from that home office when the day before it was fine, and sometimes your network doesn't appear at all as one of the available choices within Windows. These common complaints have easy fixes. We talked to Buffalo Technology, Belkin Corporation, and Hawking Technology to find out which issues come up the most at their technical support centers, and how they typically resolve these problems once and for all.