I’m So Excited

A coworker’s dad got a new laptop and they can’t get it to print on their home network. They have pretty much same set up as I do: broadband modem, wireless router for the laptop, desktop PC wired to router with attached printer. The big difference is dad’s laptop has Vista. I tried to talk her through a few things to check, but no progress was made. She’s no dummy, except, like me, in matters of Vista.

On Thursday, I printed out a bunch of stuff I found on the net about Vista and network printing and after work we headed over to visit dad. I thought I asked, but maybe not in a way that was clear, but the two PCs were not networked at all. The laptop did have access to the interweb through the router though. The domain names were the same on both PCs, we turned off the firewalls, I ran the networking wizard on the XP desktop and I think I got everything right on the Vista laptop, but there was no connection made.

I came home and hit the back alleys of the net to find a copy of Vista so I could try loading it on my laptop and see if I could network it. It took until late last night get the full torrent downloaded (I guess there is not a lot of folks out there that want a copy.)

Today I installed Vista onto the recently vacated partition where the Windows 7 Beta resided. I connected to the wireless router, changed a few networking settings on Vista and I was in. My only snafu was setting up the printer, but only because Vista didn’t have a native driver for it. A simple download later and I could print.

I wonder what it would take to start over with the whole networking thing on Dad’s machine?

I’m so excited about this coming week, but I’m not sure what about more:

1. A new episode of House on Monday,
2. the swearing in of 44,
3. season five of LOST on Wednesday,
4. or Friday afternoon off.