adoption curve dot net

About a month ago I bought a Belkin ADSL Modem With Built-In Wireless Router (yup, that’s what it’s called) after my previous Belkin WAP blew up. At the time I thought it was a reasonably good piece of kit, and blogged something to that effect – however, the long-term opinion is exactly the opposite.

Despite the fact that it was sat no more than 10 feet away (and in direct line of sight) from my Powerbook, I started having real trouble with the Powerbook just dropping off the network for no apparent reason. One second it would be fine with five bars of signal, the next it would be sat there twirling the Spinning Beachball Of Death while the connection timed out. Stopping and starting the Airport card sometimes worked, but often it would be time for a reboot, which is about as close as it gets to heresy in Mac-land.

Then the Belkin box started dropping the ADSL connection, which is something that’s never happened previously – it’s always been rock-solid. Sometimes firing up a reconnection from the admin interface would work, other times not – so the usual solution was a power-down and restart. Which is not what should have to happen.

Yesterday I got so pissed off with it, I banged it back in the box (subconsciously I must have known there was going to be a problem, because I hadn’t got around to throwing the box out) and marched back over to PC World from whence it came, fully expecting a fight because I’d owned it more than 30 seconds and had left the store with it.

To my utter amazement PC World took it back without a murmer – so I ended up walking out with a Linksys WAG54G, which they’ve knocked £50 in a promotion. The fact that it should have been £70 more expensive than the Belkin box shows – it’s way more capable than the Belkin – there’s VPN tunnel termination built-in, WAN administration that works, and full SNMP support, not that I’d ever use that. The downside is that it’s hideous – a great big blue-and-black box with a full-size twig on the back, but it does seem to work – so far I’ve had absolutely no problem with it whatsoever, in exactly the same situation as the Belkin was giving me grief. Although these might be famous last words, so watch this space this time next month…

Although it doesn’t spend much time in a bag, my Powerbook does suffer from the oily-keyboard-marks-on-screen problem – obviously my paws are too sweaty for the keyboard to remain clean. Up to now, I’ve been using some left-over screenwipes that got half-inched from two or three jobs past, but these haven’t been particularly useful, mainly because the marks reappear every time I close the lid again.

So I invested £10 or so in a Notebook ScreensavRZ, not without a few ‘what on earth have I done’ second thoughts after I’d clicked the ‘Order’ button – after all, it’s a lot of money for a glorified tissue. However, I can report that my scepticism was unfounded – they really are as good as the blurb on the website says. My screen is now as clean as it was out of the box, and shows every sign of staying that way – because the ScreensavRZ (stupid name, but hey) sits between the screen and the keyboard, it’ll keep the marks off hopefully permanently.