Daughter's new HP no better than old Compaq

Anyone who has been around CSMA knows a bit about my daughter's Compaq Presario. It had several hard drives, a new motherboard, USB port, etc. We have a three-year support agreement, and we took advantage of it: They sent a new computer, as the old one, even in their facilities, would not connect to a wireless netowrk.

In a lot of ways it's very nice. It's an HP Pavilion dv2000, with lots of pretty blue lights. No, really. Above the keyboard is a row of touch-sensitive buttons for media controls (volume, fast forward, etc.), each backlit in a nice blue. It's a model that lets you watch a DVD without booting up Windows. A nice touch, since it doesn't ship with a DVD player anyway.

But once you get back to what counts -- the operating system -- it's not so hot.

On the desktop there are 23 icons in addition to Recycle + IE + My Documents + My Computer. Several ways to get AOL, 25 free printed photos, and even Netscape and eBay are in the loop. Of course you don't get a real Windows CD, but worse, we didn't get a CD at all. Mercifully, HP was thoughtful enough to set aside 10 gigs as a separate parbreastion, but if you want to make a bootable disc, you must do it yourself, and the software lets you do it only once. There is a routine for deleting the parbreastion and recovering the space, but lots of home users would never make the attempt.

But then we get to wireless. Dammit if I can't get this thing on line if: the SSID is hidden; and-or I use any form of pbuttword. It's okay of the network is completely open, but I'm not running a Starbucks here. This makes the fifth computer of which I am personally aware that has this same problem, but of course, since Josh finds four (see 'Switching Back' 14 August) difficult to believe, I suppose five is utterly impossible.

It starts out with the problem that while I have excellent signal strength and I am "currently connected to this network", the router does not issue an IP. Odd how it manages to issue an IP to four of the other five computers in the house (they sent back the old Compaq unrepaired), even my 1984 7100-80 with an Ethernet adapter shoved in the AppleTalk port and my wife's 1980-something Compaq with a wireless card added.

Of the several "help" wizards and such offered, I figured the one called HP Network buttist may be of some use that the Start menu shortcut is called "Wireless Network Setup buttistant". Funny thing that it suggests you get on line first ... if I could go on line I wouldn't need the tool. After going a few steps and having this tool examine the landscape, it says it cannot detect a supported router helpfully suggests to click the Back button, but it's dimmed (and I note with some chagrin that the little arrows on the button point to the right).

Looks like tomorrow it's just another day of wiping a disc clean and seeing if starting over helps.

I swear, every day, as I work in the Windows world of corporate America and the home front, I am so frigging glad I switched.