This is the life

You know sometimes I run into products that are just great except for 1 or 2 huge flaws. This rant is about Microsoft Windows Vista. Unfortunately, I have to support people using the product which means I need to know how to change Vista to be a more acceptable product. What that means is I need to be running it to find all the flaws I can, fix them, or find a workaround. Well I bit the bullet and installed Vista. I then Installed all the normal programs and such. It was a completely pain until I disabled the constant “Are you sure?” dialogs and removed the hideous theme. So it was acceptable at this point.

I installed one of the games that I normally play (it also has a linux client, so I actually spent the cash on it) and start noticing ping spikes every minute. Well after searching long and hard, I’ve come to this conclusion. You cannot game in Vista on wireless unless you have a utility from your wireless card’s manufacturer to completely handle the connection. Vista is garbage in this aspect. It literally puts your wifi on hold at 60 second intervals, searches for other networks, then resumes what you’re doing. No big deal. Unless you’re using the connection during this time.

Utter garbage. “WLAN Autoconfig” is the system service that manages the wireless connectivity and once it is deactivated, you cannot configure the wireless manually. You would assume that since this is just the “autoconfig” service that you could manually configure it. Not so!

So out comes the trusty Cat5e spool and wiring toolbox. And soon, out comes the Ubuntu CD. At least then I’ll have steady wireless, all my favorite apps, and no huge flaws.