Travel Light. And Take Your Mac.
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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I’m not the most network literate computer user out there. I know how to set a basic network up, or at least, I know how to set one up on a Mac. When I try and connect two Windows PC’s together, I’m there for a good hour inserting IP addresses and then just maybe out of chance I’ll get it sorted. I don’t care what any XP user says, it’s not a simple task to network up on Windows.
However, connecting my iMac and PowerBook together and to airport express is a complete doddle. I hardly did anything. I think I simply turned everything on, made sure Airport was doing it’s thing, set up a password and voila, I’m good to go.
I don’t care what any XP user says, it’s not a simple task to network up on Windows.
Really? Because mine was plug and play, just like my Mac.
Honestly, I think there must be something subconscious going on with Mac users (certain ones) that makes them intentionally sabotage their XP systems or make them more difficult to use than they actually are. Or it could be the inherent learning curve of moving from one system to another (it shouldn’t surprise anyone that new migrants to OS X from XP often report similar learning curve issues).
Likewise on trips, if there’s an open wifi, I simply open my XP laptop and connect. No IP addresses. No passwords. Just connect. It’s awesome.
I wouldn’t say I sabotage anything, but I’ve never had an easy experience on Windows. It was never ever plug and play for me. I always went through the network setup wizard, that worked until one or the other computer was restarted and then it would fail on me.
Then wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe this as your own failing instead of blaming the machine?
I’m sorry Beeb but your clear natural facility for geekery can’t hide the fact that XP simply is more fussy about networking, especially wireless networking. No question. I have frequently got calls from friends with (particularly wireless) networking problems with XP. I just don’t hear of Mac users having these sorts of problems.
I appreciate your effort to be level-headed in the Mac vs Windows wars, but seriously, credit where credit’s due.
So you’re saying, Ben, that when I find a wifi hotspot that I DON’T just open my laptop and connect, that I’m going in and futzing with IP addresses and passwords without realizing it?
Thanks for clearing that up.
I’m an occasional poster and daily reader and I constantly find myself wondering why you read this web site Beeb - you don’t come across as a Mac fan; completely the opposite if truth be told.
Anyway, to add further weight to the argument, I’ve set networks up on Macs and PCs - every time I’ve done it the Macs just *worked*. Often the PC networks worked just as easily but not every time. It appeared to be more a case of luck than judgement as to whether the PCs wanted to play ball.
Comparing “plug it in and, well, it just sorts itself out” with the Windows XP network set-up assistant isn’t even an accurate comparison. On OSX you don’t really need to know what you’re doing, on XP you *really* need to know what you’re doing (which is why I always recommend Macs to non-computer literate people, or in other words about 80 per cent of Western civilization).
RB
Hitch, just because I’m not a drooling, brainless, sycophantic Mac drone who’s replaced my own opinions with anything Jobs tells me, doesn’t mean I’m not a fan of the Mac. As I’ve stated repeatedly, I have a Mac, I’m getting ready to buy another one. I just don’t drink the kool-aid and I rail against the kind of FUD and ridiculous double-standards of people who do, people who use dumbass marketing phrases like “it just works” as if it’s their own thought.
And what David is talking about is using a wifi laptop in an open hotspot, like an airport or a hoetl, not setting up a network. That’s a whole other issue that’s getting conflated here.
I was referring here to people’s experiences setting up home wifi internet sharing. You go, budday.
I was referring here to people’s experiences setting up home wifi internet sharing.
The article seems to be mostly about finding hotspots. But he does address briefly setting up a base station in his hotel room. To wit:
I just don’t hear of Mac users having these sorts of problems.
Here’s where David does address setting up a hotspot in his hotel before running into problems with his Thinkpad:
It’s not all easy-peasy, that is unless you have already set your Airport Express as a base station. 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.
Frankly, this sounds about like setting up any basic home wifi. My experience with my D-Link was exactly the same. I read the manual. I set it up. It worked. It still works, and has done so for two years.
So how does all of this get filtered down through the reality distortion machine and vomited out as “with Macs you just turn it on and it just *works* but with PCs you have to have an engineering degree and a Sears tool kit just to open the box!”
And all of that is a wholly different issue from using a laptop to join an open WAP. With my XP laptop, I simply turn it on and join. There are no passwords or IP addresses to mess with.
The thing where most difficulties are had, in my experience, is with setting up security on their wireless networks. But if you’d like to whittle down the details any further, sure thing.
I think the wireless networking products and simplicity and reliability of use in os x are better than in windows xp, judging by the fact that friends of mine have had problems setting up secure wireless networks with their xp laptops and 3rd party adapters.
I’m going to break it down this way and I think it’s important to seperate the two.
You can’t set up a network on your laptop. Your wifi is accessed through a WAP, right? So you’re either setting up a D-Link or Linksys, whatever, or Airport Express.
None of this has anything to do with XP, unless you’re using a browser in XP to access the WAP configuration.
This is an entirely seperate issue. And having never set up an Airport Express, I can’t compare it to my D-Link or Netgear experience. It’s possible that it’s way easier with the AE, but from what David describes above, the systems are probably about the same.
Now, once the WAP is up and running, you’re dealing with getting XP and OS X onto that network. And here my experience is about the same. Plug it in (if you’re wired) or turn it on (wireless) and it works.
So where is this supposed breakdown occuring? I’m willing to bet it’s a combination of a) perception issues on the part of Mac users and b) the fact that there are many more inexperienced computer users on XP than on OS X.
“You can’t set up a network on your laptop.”
The option ‘create network’ under the airport menu bar item would appear to belie this. A WAP and a laptop on the network can be effectively the same thing… However, in the situation that you describe, the access point will need setting up, obviously. I didn’t realise that was at issue.
Are we really having such communicational difficulties that I can’t convey to you the fact that I know people who have experienced problems setting up their wireless networks, particularly encrypted ones, on their XP machines? And that I believe this is less likely to happen on a mac?
And that I believe this is less likely to happen on a mac?
It’s not your experience that’s in question. It’s your interpretation of that experience by conflating network setup with wireless access and without factoring in other substantial factors, like who is more likely to use a Mac vs XP. And as Mac users are fond of pointing out when it suits them, they tend to be better educated and more computer savvy.
Does that mean that XP is inherently more difficult or does it mean that Mac users tend to know what they’re doing?
I’m not answering that question necessarily. It could be that OS X is easier to use. It could also be that both are fairly simple to use with some minor setup and that XP users by and large aren’t as interested/knowledgable in doing so.
“I just don’t drink the kool-aid and I rail against the kind of FUD and ridiculous double-standards of people who do, people who use dumbass marketing phrases like “it just works” as if it’s their own thought.”
Not at all mate, it’s just one of those phrases that perfectly encompasses everything you want to say in a way that people understand.
“And as Mac users are fond of pointing out when it suits them, they tend to be better educated and more computer savvy.”
Personally I don’t think that’s even slightly true; some “real” geeks like OSX because of the UNIX underbelly, some “real” geeks like XP because they can get a DOS prompt and play around. I like OSX because I don’t have to mess around with it to make it do what I want and that’s the reason I got fed up of XP.
“Does that mean that XP is inherently more difficult or does it mean that Mac users tend to know what they’re doing?”
XP isn’t common-sensical. The way that the OS works isn’t as simple as it could be (indeed, as simple as OSX is). There are so many little annoyances that get in the way of letting you just get on and do what it is you’re trying to do. OSX’s greatest achievement in my opinion is that it automates (or simplifies) a wide variety of potentially difficult tasks (such as networking) for you, leaving you to get on with your work.
Put in incredibly simplistic terms, I’d say that OSX feels like it was designed by people that wanted to make the experience easy and XP feels like it was designed by geeks who have a higher expectation of user-knowledge than actually exists.
All this said, I’m not denying for one second that whenever you have tried to do something with XP it’s done precisely what you wanted it to. All I - and, I believe, some of the other people leaving comments - am trying to say is that in *our* experience, using Windows XP to, for example, connect to a Wi-Fi network and/or network generally, isn’t a pleasant experience.
That said, it’s even harder in Linux - but that’s another story for another day.