technology- failure to communicate



For a router, this is pretty cool looking!

Today I spent 5 hours reconfiguring laptops, wifi printers, and roku boxes back to my old wireless router from the fancy new one I installed last night. This time included tech help calls, a lot of grimacing, and finding out that Netgear uses a 10 second loop (I counted) of blues music for their hold music. If I am frustrated enough to call the help line, why would you want me to be additionally annoyed with your music loop. How does Netgear think I might respond to the rep when they final take my call? Pleasantly, I don't think so.

Reflecting on today's events, and phone calls, brings me to something I have always felt- new does not equal better.
My new router, which boasts dual bands with 2.4 and 5 units of speed, sounds cool. Until, I speak with my ISP and find out that they are no where near broadcasting at 5 units (I really don't know what the speed unit is... or care). So, the dual bands serve no real use.

Then there is the cool looking Lucite stand that is made onto the router, which makes it too big to fit in the old routers location... but it looks cool.

However, the main reason the unit is going back it that it cannot talk to all my devices... at least not with the instructions provided and if Netgear had provided my with decent "live chat" or phone support, I might have kept it's for the looks. However, it has a gross failure to communicate!

Keeping my old router is probably the greenest of my tech decisions, recently. Saving very plastic technology from landfills is responsible, be it though figuring out how to make it work, or from finding a technology recycler (find a local one in your area, here). And though I was not purchasing the hot new thing, simply because it was new, it is important to remember that there can be more than one way to solve a problem. And that is what good design is about, solving problems! So yea... to my two year old Cisco Valet in the pretty shade of blue. Long may you route wirelessly!