Wildblue, er, stinks!
So, I'm on the internet trying to do a quick blog because I've been blogging over at Blame it on the Muse with our other bloggers away at Nationals and have been ignoring my many fans here at the Marley Delarose blog. It takes so long to load the page I nearly fall asleep which reminds me that I never installed the little diagnostic program the representative told me about.
I'd called because as usual I went to a speedtest site to see why it was taking 30 seconds or more to load pages. It reported my download speed as 700 kbps and upload at DRUMROLLLLLL please, .03 kbps. Yes, you're reading that correctly. Now, according to them everything looks just peachy. .03 is standard but I'm not using a recognized diagnostic.
In her very sweet, very trained - have I handled everything to your satisfaction today (obviously not) - kind of voice, she says, "What you need is the Wildblue Pulse diagnostic tool. Along with the optimizer."
Me: I have the optimizer on my Macs.
Her: And we recommend the latest version of Firefox as a browser.
Me: Okay, I can do that, it's already installed, just to see if it makes any difference (I say with my best I don't believe this for a second sarcasm.) Is Pulse available for Mac?
Her: Oh, of course. (NOT, I got to the site with her on the other end of the line and we see together that it is only available for Windows.
Me: No problem. I'll install it on my PC and run the diagnostic on the internet.
So today, I boot up the stupid PC and:
Make sure I have the Optimizer installed on the computer - check.
I have the latest version of Firefox - check.
I open Firefox and go to the Wildblue site and look for the Pulse program which I'd previously installed.
It won't run. So I look at the installation instructions.
"You must run FFClickonce for Firefox to use Pulse."
So, I download FFClickonce but the message next to the download button says, "This program is not updated to run with the newest version of Firefox." Click here to see a workaround which just tells me to make IE the default, install Pulse and then make Firefox the default.
This done, I run the Pulse program with my PC on wireless internet. After the program tests ten sites and the diagnostics report comes up I notice it says there is no internet service - uh-huh. Then there's a page where there are green check marks next to items no one including WB can identify. So I click on recommendations.
Now, this is entertaining. First of all it tells me I'm not using an approved OS. 'click' here to see approved ones. Windows 7 is listed. Then it says my system isn't optimized. Right. Then it says no virus scan is installed. Un-freakin' believable. I teach computers in a world where no computer should be without virus software.
This is the service we get for $70 a month. They should just have a telephone dialog when you call tech support that says, you're screwed. There is no other internet available so either pay or go away.
What's the opposite of Joie de vive? This is driving me to drink?
1 comment:
I think you need to move, Marley. Somewhere cool and where the internet connection is strong - oh, that could be a song.
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