I don’t think I’ve ever written explicitly about how much I hate getting online in the U.S. with my Verizon phone. In fact, I think that will shock some of you since I have always expressed satisfaction with internet in the U.S. Well, the fact is that the Mac version of VZ access manager, the app that lets you dial the phone and establish a connection to the net, is the demon spawn of the dude who wrote the coding for Windows 95. I have never seen such a buggy piece of software. In fact, it is so bad, that it truly crashes Mac in that it freezes everything and requires such a hard reboot that it breaks the hard drive. I can normally go months without having to repair my hard drive, but I need to do it once a day in the States because of VZ access manager. It is just a crappy piece of software and the developer is unreachable. Verizon can’t do much about that. More sophisticated Mac users have come up with roundabout ways of connecting without using the software. I plan to read up on the methods and try a different route next year.
All that was to say that dealing with VZ access manager was better than the internet connection I’ve had here for the last few weeks… until today. I’m hoping that’s clear enough context to illustrate my frustration. I could deal with the VZ access manager mess because it was predictable and I knew how to fix it and that I’d be back online shortly. Not so here.
Once I got online this morning after bringing the antenna down closer to ground level, I had only one major drop all day and one very minor drop. By major, I mean the internet, being sentient, shut down once I realized it needed to if I was to get any work done and came back at exactly the moment I was honestly do for a break. If that’s not proof of sentience, I don’t know what is. And then the Mifi went dormant a few minutes ago, but the connection started immediately after I rebooted. I was even able to seamlessly stream an episode on Netflix during a raging downpour! In other words, this has been my least frustrating day on internet since Dallas, where I was using Ms. Cinnamon’s connection. Things are looking up!
I’m taking bets that I’ll be posting from the hill tomorrow morning. 😀
And with that, I’m off to bed. It has been a very long and cold transcription day and my finger joints hurt.
Wow, since we are pcers we had no idea there were so many problems with the Mac version of VZ access manager!
We always put our USB stick into our cradlepoint router so that the two of us could share our internet. It also gave us access for our non-USB devices. As such we didn’t use the VS access manager software. I know it is another expense on top of an already big investment but I’m sure that would solve your problem.
Verizon has been trying to upgrade my phone for some time and I will take them up on the offer when I go back to the States in the fall. A rep mentioned that I can get a model that acts as a wifi hotspot rather than needing to be tethered to the computer. I’ve seen that in action with an iPhone and it seems to work well. So I may go that route in the fall.