On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 10:37:03PM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: > (And I'd still like to know why pretty much every Windows laptop I > come across has provided a completely different vendor-provided > mechanism for connecting to wireless networks. The only common theme > is that they all take way too many steps to go from "turn on > wireless" to "select a network". I can think of at least a dozen > approaches to this problem and not one of them reduced it to the two- > step process that it should be. And I can't tell if the Windows- > provided procedure is any better, but I assume it must not be because > all these vendors are trying to override it...).
I'm responsible for giving machines to users at my company. When I give someone a laptop, the first thing I do is disable (uninstall, if I can) the OEM wifi configurator thingy. They're all hateful, and they all work differently. The default windows dialog is actually not all that hateful. It shows the user the available networks, and the widgets behave as you would expect them to. I have yet to run into any users who are confused by it. I can't say the same for Intel or Dell's software, however. If you can't figure out how to disable the OEM application, you can always start the "Wireless Zero Config" service. That should allow the windows dialog to configure the card. -Zach
