over-technical geek gear woes

Sometimes, technology gets in the way of people's acceptance of technology. Witness the 3G/4G Hotspot we got last summer.

When we moved to the new-to-us house last summer, we took our time dealing with moving the land-line, eventually simply dropping it altogether. By the time we had made that decision, however, Jenn had been sold on using the aforementioned hotspot for our home internet connection. I was skeptical, and said so, but went along. And have never really felt that I was right to go along. The thing gave me roughly 67% dependability--two out of three times I went to go online, I would have to reboot the device and/or disconnect it from the desktop computer I prefer to use (which does not have a wireless card--the hotspot plugs into a USB port, which also serves as the power supply for the little black box) and/or also reboot the computer. The ONLY thing reliable about this device is that it would piss me off--often.

After my numerous and increasingly heartfelt threats to toss the thing across the road from the house (escalating to "at the next locomotive that I see"), she finally got the idea that since she had wanted the darned thing so much, SHE was going to have to get it fixed. She took it to the Sprint store, and they waved their magic screwdriver over it or something and declared it working. It came home, and never worked any better than it had. Jenn eventually got a USB2 card for me to add to the computer, figuring that was a factor, and WOW!! an actual improvement! While online, I got dropped far less often (I would be in the middle of, say, typing a blog entry and find myself disconnected from the 'net). I still would have to restart the Hotspot two out of three times I went to get online, but, well...

I had more troubles with this thing in a given month than I had had in several years of having a DSL connection. "State of the art," indeed.

The "reliability" index went up to four out of five times about a month ago, and on every reboot I would see a message that an update was available for the hotspot. A several of failed attempts at downloading the update later, Jenn took it to the Sprint store again, where they force-fed it the updates and told her that it should work better now.

Sure enough, the reliability index went to over 95%. Almost every single time I wanted to get online, I found it necessary to reboot the hotspot. Over the two-week period after the "fix" was made at the store, I got online one time without having to first turn off the hotspot and restart it. I made some time to work with Sprint on Friday evening, figuring I'd be spending at least half an hour just getting to the point I would be speaking to a live person that could imitate a sentient being. Since getting to that point required that I be shunted from person to person to person, I was having a horrible time hearing what the tech was trying to say, so she called me directly (reluctant as I was to release a line, given the trouble I'd had connecting to her in the first place). I need to talk to the Sprint people about changing some protocols on my phone, too--in the middle of all this I received a text message which fouled things further--I want to switch it so that incoming text messages do NOT override everything else happening at the moment.

Long story short (I know--too late for that), Sprint is sending me a replacement Hotspot. I figure it will arrive Tuesday or Wednesday, and while I'm getting it working I will be insisting that we deserve at least three months' credit for having to deal with this piece of garbage. I'll settle for a two months' worth, I suppose.

We'll see how it goes.