I have to say the sheer cheek of BT's latest WiFi dongle scam made me giggle a bit. I bought the dongle from Maplin's to transform my old PC into a bedroom iPlayer.
Like a twit I installed the software which came with the dongle. Then up came a message from BT offering to connect me to my own Hotspot for £5 a day.
What chutzpah! What élan! This is the cheekiest piece of BT-ery and dongle-bollox in a long time.
So, I uninstall the software, reboot the old PC and still this piece of BT cheek comes up, but there's a little note from Microsoft saying I should have a butchers at something called the Wireless Zero Configuration section on their Knowledge Base.
Well I do, and the Knowledge Base seems to be trying to solve the problem, and there's very clear instructions on how to do it.
I think I do what they say - but nothing happens. Again I type in the message given to activate the Wireless Zero Configuration. Again nothing happens. Then again.
Then I sit back and think. This is what I think: 'These instructions have probably been written by a gamer. His mentality is to give me a sense of achievement at following this thing through successfully. Making it simple and easy wouldn't give me the thrill of having overcome the Dungeon Monster or whatever. So there's a trick to this and you have to figure out what it is.'
I look very closely at the strings of computer garbage I'm supposed to enter to achieve Wireless Zero Configuration, and it is then that I spot the trick - there it is, right in the middle of one of the strings of letters. There's a gap.
I enter the string, including the gap, and - Bingo - the problem is solved.
When I get on-line the dongle connects me straight through to my Hotspot downstairs without insolent messages demanding BT's absurd toll.
Hurrah! But what a hassle. Couldn't they make this stuff a little easier?
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