Tom Morris

Linksys and Dabs.com - partners in shittiness

For crying out loud, does anyone out there have any idea about customer service? Here’s the story - Linksys produced a good piece of hardware that people built an open source driver for. Linksys realise and change it to break the compatibility with the driver. Then they don’t tell anyone.

I buy one of the new, broken ones from dabs.com, who are completely uncontactable by phone (I need to start a blacklist of Internet-companies that you can’t call), and now need to send it back because I can’t put OpenWrt on it - which was the reason I bought the fucking thing in the first place.

The only reason people buy the WRT54G is because of the open source software that goes with it. Without that, there are cheaper and better routers that are hamstrung in this manner.

Now I have to talk to someone in a teeny little chat window and pay to have this piece of junk returned back up to Bolton or wherever they are, all because Linksys haven’t got the ability to sell me a good router.

If anyone knows of an DSL router that is compatible with OpenWrt that I can buy in the UK, please email me or comment. I need a router with a flexible QoS setup so that if I’m torrenting something, it doesn’t interfere with VoIP or MMORPGs etc. If there’s any source for second-hand v4 WRT54G’s, that’d be really helpful.

Next, I’ve got to call Apple and get them to fix my damn MacBook Pro with all it’s bullshit battery issues.

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And it’s not just that. Windows is now bugging the shit out of me too. It seems chronically unable to do something really quite simple - burn a DVD. That, and it’s gone and got itself virtually knocked up with some spyware that pretends to display an “Add/Remove Programs” window whenever you use Internet Explorer (something I avoid, needless to say). What exactly is required for me to simply have a computer and network that works? My Linux install doesn’t work either, which is part of the reason I’m in my barely functioning Windows install. I can hardly praise Apple either, what with the shitty battery problems I’ve been having.

Todd recounts the daily story of his and my school days: “I went to secondary school in a small village, and the only thing to do if you wanted to get away from all the screaming kids and nu metal fans at lunch was walk to a churchyard up the road to eat dry sandwiches and discuss how awful the day had been with a tramp that used to hang around there. Lunchtime seemed to go on forever. With hindsight, I’m lucky the tramp didn’t try to rape me and steal my money. That would have capped lunchtime off a treat.”