New laptop Internet problems

The new laptop arrived last Monday -- as you know.

Mostly it was easy to get up and running. But for some reason, getting access to the Internet turned out to be quite the challenge. Every day I tried tweaking this and that; but nothing worked.

Eventually I got it to find my LinkSys router. But I couldn't get the browser to download any web sites.

Adelphia said it wasn't their fault. It would be with LinkSys and they don't trouble shoot for another brand. (Not that Adelphia has a brand that does wireless; just that they're not qualified to do it.)

In fact, I called three different times, on 3 different days, at 3 different shift times. I figured that everyone was giving me "canned" responses and they weren't really listening to the question.

Finally, on Friday night, I called HP. The first time, I was on hold for 45 minutes and then another call came in which I had to take, thus hanging up after that long wait for nothing. The second time it was after 11:00 p.m. and I figured that surely there wouldn't be any interruptions. But I still had to wait on hold for 40 minutes.

Eventually a live person answered. But guess what? She spoke English with an Indian accent and spoke so fast that I couldn't understand her. Three times I asked her to slow down. She would try and then speed up again. Finally, I said, "Look. I'm not very good with accents and I'm not getting even half of what you're saying. Could you transfer me to someone else?" This time she began to speak slowly enough that I could understand her.

Oh, I should say that while I was on hold re the laptop, I went online to HP.com/support using my desktop. There I found very helpful info including how to access LynkSys and get certain numbers like the IP address, etc.

To make the long story short, -- guess what? The problem was with Adelphia after all! They needed to give me a "Gateway Mask" number! And the IP number. And tweak a dialog box of info.

With the new info, I was accessing web sites immediately. Not that I had the strength or awakeness to do so by now! LOL But after a few trial runs, I turned everything off and crawled into bed around 1:30 a.m.

Whew - What a night. But because the laptop was finally up and running, at least as far as the Internet is concerned, I slept peacefully.