Thursday, January 2, 2014

Update on Windows 8 internet access stability

Isn't it embarrassing to convince the family to invest in the latest must-have technology and then not be able to get it to work?  As we learned last month (thank goodness I tested before exposing it to the crowd), your nice new Windows 8 machine has the potential to embarrass you mightily.  Before you jump too quickly to revisit some steps you might have to take to get your nice new holiday computer working properly (i.e. accessing the internet, a pretty much indispensable requirement), here's an update on that story.

Many of the steps I took last month came from a host of different websites in search of a solution that would work.  By now I'm not sure whether some particular actions actually made no difference, but the combination lasted for a month, even getting me through a real-time programming class requiring internet access in a large university lecture hall.

Over the holidays the glitch was back, or more specifically I couldn't get on the internet.  At first I thought it might have been because the whole neighborhood was at home and logged in, but since my tablet was working just fine I reckoned it was the computer.  Theorizing that perhaps the wireless adapter wasn't properly installed (which I am told is fairly common) I took it in to the Geek Squad to see if they could either put a meter of some kind on it, or perhaps just re-seat it.  As it turns out, modern computer design does not envision component swap-out so they just replaced the whole box.  (Hmm . maybe another post is forming on how the entire computer industry is rejecting the business models that made it a multi-trillion dollar industry).

Now for the good news: Microsoft and/or Best Buy have updated their configurations in several ways and very little needed to be done to keep the new box on line and productive.  The security systems do not seem to be in conflict and the power setting that turns off your wireless adapter to save energy has been removed from the default settings (although you definitely want to check that one).  And of course to do so you need to be able to find the Control Panel.

This you can do via <Windows key>-<D>, which gives you the alternate command "charms" (what were they thinking about with different command menus for different views in a system that actually has no documentation?).  Flip the charms out of the right-hand side of the screen (no idea how you do this if you don't have a touch-screen), choose settings, and at long last the Control Panel appears.  Choose the Power setting and make sure this option is turned off in your active power profile.

The other way of doing this is to download the classic shell, i.e. the Windows XP or Windows 7 "start button" which returns control of the process to you, the user.  It also allows you to have more than one window available at a time, and really if that doesn't seem important to you then you'd be much better off with a tablet.

Those minor fixes aside, the new computer has now been running for a couple of weeks with no difficulty and seems to be quite happy.  The good news about Windows 8 is that it boots up really fast: the computer beats my cell phone by a mile in a boot-up race.

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