The Belkin USB wireless adapter I was using never connected consistently, in fact mostly it didn’t connect at all. I checked the model number and it was a 802.11g+ rather than the normal g, and which is supposed to connect over a greater distance.

Well it may have done that if I had been bothered to test those capabilities, but the problem was it didn’t actually connect to the Net very well in the first place. It would scan for ages then might connect. Shortly afterwards it would disconnect. Sometimes it would stay connected for about 15 minutes but mostly it was far less than that. Shame that I had binned the box as even though I still had the receipt I couldn’t return it. I did speak to the guy in the store and he naturally enough said that they’d never had anybody else with any problems with it. Hmmm…

I did notice though that they no longer sold the g+ version, just the plain old 802.11g version. So I got one of those, installed it and its worked perfectly.

I got a Western Digital 250gig Passport drive the other day to replace my old 250gig USB drive which broke when it crashed to the ground from atop the PC.

The Passport drive doesn’t even have a power connector as it gets its juice from the USB socket, so there went yet another reliable powered USB socket. I’ve got a feeling my USB wireless adapters problems are all about powered USB sockets. The Passport is obviously made for laptops but are very convenient for desktops, so much so I may get yet another one, but that does mean losing yet another powered USB socket. What I need to get is a powered USB hub.

The Passport came with some synicing software which worked very well and very quick and much faster than Microsoft’s Synctoy. Though when I went to use the Passport syncing software again the other day, could I find it. Could I hell. I eventually found it on the Passport drive itself though it hadn’t created any shortcuts to itself anywhere nor had it registered itself with the registry, so XP knew squat about it. Created a shortcut for it on the desktop.

Noel Coward’s Letters

I got this book at Christmas and very good it is to. I love reading books on the theatre, or the old theatre. There is one letter he wrote to his Mother where he explained how, after one of his plays had just finished whilst on Broadway, a spotlight was shone on Noel Coward and how he was described as the greatest living playwrite. The sense of euphoria that he described he felt was truly exhilarating. I’m up to his letters in the 1930’s so far and have slowed down reading it as I really don’t want it to end.

I also got Michael Billington’s (theatre critic) ‘State of the Nation’, which is about British Theatre since 1945. Also good but very political and very left when describing the 1970’s.

Lastly I got a biography of Cecil B DeMille which I haven’t started yet. I will like this as I love reading about Hollywood, whether old or new. Something tells me I should have been an actor. 

I’m still having occasional trouble with my wireless connection on the XP PC. I had to go through various bits of jiggery-pockery to get the old D-Link uninstalled then I was able to install the software for the Belkin, but that doesn’t connect very well.

It thinks it’s connected as it flashes its light like it’s connected but quite often I can’t then access anything on the Net. More jiggery-pockery and this morning I seemed to have a good connection, though there was no connection icon in the tray and when I checked Network Connections in the Control Panel the only connected network adapter was Bluetooth. Eh! Lord knows what that thinks its connected to. Carried on surfing, cooked lunch and came back and the Net connection had disappeared.

Started up the Belkin Wireless USB Utility and that popped up a message that it thought there was no USB Adapter connected. Looked pretty connected to me. This sounded very familiar as I’m sure I have had this problem before.

This looks like a golden opportunity to unplug all of my USB devices and start again by plugging them in again one at a time. And that sounds like a recipe for disaster as whenever I have had to switch a device between USB sockets XP doesn’t cope too well. A few reboots might hopefully cure those problems.