Comments on: In Router News

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 01:22:41 +0000

Yeah, PJ, I have a few Craftsmen Chert tools that are a few generations older than I am. 🙂

By: paintedjaguar

paintedjaguar — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 05:49:40 +0000

I thought about obsidian, Bryan, but it wouldn’t work with my Win98 themes. People tell me this “Aero Glass” thing is pretty sharp, though.

Steve —
You are not the only one who misses the analog world. Somehow the downy soft, durable, virgin wool sweaters and shirts I used to own have stuck in my mind as a symbol. Also recyclable glass bottles. Wasn’t it nice to have things that didn’t need to be upgraded for several decades? Well, I do have hand tools that are older than I am. Just used some of them to install a new sink fixture.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 16:24:23 +0000

Actually, Steve, I have to deal with those routers when installing doors, etc. and would love to be able to update the firmware so that the setting for one door is the same for all doors.

PJ, have you considered upgrading to obsidian?

By: paintedjaguar

paintedjaguar — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 06:31:23 +0000

“grooves in wood”? I’d think those antenna stubs would be too dull to accomplish that. I’ll stick to knapped flint, thanks.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 05:50:07 +0000

Has anyone else besides me ever had a day when you longed for a golden age in which a “router” was something you used to make grooves in wood?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 20:13:37 +0000

HP does it, but most other vendors don’t bother. The new router I bought wipes out all settings when you update the firmware which is a PITA.

Hell, Apple is the only vendor with a decent back-up system.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:49:12 +0000

Thing is, Netgear *does* control the hardware and software, and they’re using the exact same internal components that Apple is using. And they could have implemented auto-updating just like Apple (it’s Linux, after all), but they didn’t because, well, because that would be thinking like a user, not like a computer engineer, and they don’t think like users. SIGH.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 18:48:43 +0000

You can do that sort of thing when you control the hardware and software with 40%+ profit margins. I don’t know that I would call people willing to pay those margins ‘idiots’ …

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 04:44:00 +0000

In other news, no router exploits have been found in my Apple Airport XTreme router in, like, ever, and it auto-updates without me having to tell it to update. In fact, I’d have to tell it *not* to auto-update.

Some computer companies realize that customers are idiots, and design around that. Others are Netgear. Or may as well be.