Hi All,
I was able to meet with her tonight & solve the problem & thought I
would post the status of this item.
It looks as if the internal Ethernet port on the the laptop was pooched
as it would not connect to the router or the modem. I tested the cable
to make sure & used a known working laptop to verify. Once we figured
that out it was a matter of getting her wireless working properly.
Daffyd had a spare external PCMCIA Ethernet card floating around, but I
forgot it so will drop by tomorrow & give it to her so she has both options.
Unfortunately the wireless on the laptop was old & would only support A
& B & was only capable of WEP. I did have a spare G wireless PC card
that worked with WPA & was able to get that working for her also. We
tried a number of things to eliminate the various options before we
found something that worked effectively for her.
She is coming from a Mac background & is wanting o learn things more
"Windows" like to help with her job hunting. I made sure that she
understood that the issues she was having have nothing to do with Linux
& would affect her if she were on Mac or Windows as well. She is very
new to Linux, but is very determined to learn more about it.
All it all I spent 3 hours helping her out & will likely spend another
30 minutes more to smooth out the edges for her. To show the value of
what she was getting I let her know that if she were to take this to
best buy or staples or something that she would most likely be charged a
few hundred dollars to find out that they couldn't help her...that is
assuming she could find someone that knew Linux. As this was a request
from the prez, I told her it was graciously done as a courtesy to show
how community-minded & support-oriented the FLOSS community is. In
short...we take care of our own...and the other guys too. LOL!
She did offer to pay me for the card, but I said if she wanted to give
something, she could make a donation to CLUG. I did also encourage her
to join the mailing list & get involved in the CLUG community if she
wants to learn more. She did give me some fabulous home made greeting
cards; her mom gave me some homemade Jewish cookies as well as some
apple juice & water. Oh yeah.. and a big hug! Did get a dinner invite
also but already ate. Damn!
Essentially...she is very happy & excited & was very grateful for the
help. I do plan to pint her to the "Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04"
Guide (ubuntu-manual.org) to help give her some resources to look at. I
did mention that a few people did try to contact her over the weekend,
but her phone was in another bag & so she apologized for that. All in
all...it just goes to show how a little off ourselves can go a long way
& that even the simplest gestures can make a huge difference.
Cameron
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