Mossberg on Anypoint....
John
Linking Up Home PCs
Is Dubious and Messy
WHENEVER the computer industry introduces a supposedly
simple, purportedly must-have product, smart consumers should
grow suspicious. This is an industry with a great hype machine
but almost no clue about what mainstream users consider simple
and what they really need. So skepticism is in order when
considering the industry's latest "hot" product: home-networking
systems, which let you link two or more home personal
computers.
One such product is Intel's AnyPoint
Home Network, which the company
claims is "quick and easy" to set up.
AnyPoint, which costs between $79
and $99 per PC, supposedly creates
a network of PCs in your home using the existing telephone lines
in your walls, without interfering with voice or modem phone calls.
Last weekend, I tried to set up a three-computer AnyPoint
network in my home, following Intel's instructions to the letter.
What I got instead was a two-computer network, with one PC left
out of the loop. Not only that, but the networked machines lost the
ability to print. Still, at least I'm now part of the hot new trend.
DETAILS OF MY five-hour networking project are below. But
first, let's examine the reasons for networking home PCs. Intel
cites several. You can share a single printer among multiple
machines. You can swap files stored in different rooms. You can
play certain network-enabled games on multiple PCs. And you
can share a single, costly high-speed Internet connection, such
as a cable modem.
However, most of these reasons are weak. Printers are now so
cheap it's not worth the effort to share one. When you want to
move a file from one PC to another, carrying a disk from room to
room is quite easy, except perhaps in the giant mansions
occupied by the high-tech tycoons pushing home networking. The
ability to play multiplayer games at home is a better reason for a
home network, but it applies only in the minority of homes where
games are such a serious pastime that it justifies the hassle of
building a network.
If you have a question you want answered, or any other comment
or suggestion about Walter S. Mossberg's column, please send
e-mail to mossberg@wsj.com.
Only the last reason, the sharing of a cable modem, makes much
sense to me. Such connections are incredibly convenient and of
great appeal to all family members. But they are usually so costly
and hard to install that they reside in only one room. If they could
be shared, a family might be able to do without a second phone
line.
AnyPoint comes in two versions. One requires the installation of
an internal card in the PC, something I believe most users won't
and shouldn't do. So I tested the other, which hooks up via the
printer port on the back of a PC, and then provides a
replacement port for your printer on the back of the gray plastic
AnyPoint box.
Intel urges journalists to "look at the product through the eyes of
the novice user." So I did. In my test, the main PC, or the "server,"
was a Dell in my study with a cable modem attached. There were
two satellite PCs, or "clients." One was my wife's Compaq
desktop in our bedroom; the other was a Compaq laptop placed
in the kitchen for this test.
I carefully followed the
instructions in Intel's well-written
manuals, attaching each
AnyPoint box to a PC and then
plugging each box into a phone
jack. All of the networked PCs
must be plugged into jacks on
the same phone line, even if you
have multiple lines in a house.
Mine were. Then I installed Intel's
three pieces of software. This
went OK, with only a little
confusion but no error
messages.
And when I was done -- voila! The kitchen laptop couldn't be
detected by the network. I tried every troubleshooting tip in the
manual, and even temporarily unplugged various phones and
modems. Hours later, nothing I tried had worked.
Then I discovered that neither my wife's computer nor mine could
print anymore on the two very common Hewlett-Packard DeskJet
printers we use. Intel had admitted that some minor printing
features might be lost. But in our house, both printers became
totally inoperable once AnyPoint was installed. I managed to get
them working again by running an obscure printer configuration
program few mainstream users would know about.
Even when AnyPoint operates normally, Intel concedes, it
disables some other important functions, like the energy-saving
sleep mode on PCs and the ability to use Zip drives and other
devices, like scanners, that connect to the printer port.
IN THE END, my wife and I were able to share the cable
modem, with no noticeable degradation in modem speed, even
when we were on the Net simultaneously. That was great, but it
required herculean efforts.
Lest you think my problems were
unique, consider this. A colleague
labored for 12 hours last week to set up
a similar three-computer AnyPoint
network. First he had to install a new
computer in one room. Then AnyPoint
knocked out his cable modem capability altogether. When he got
that back, the modem wouldn't work over the network. He got the
whole thing working properly only when a teenager told him about
an arcane technical fix buried in Windows.
Intel plans a simpler version of AnyPoint later this year, which will
replace the printer-port connections with the easier USB type of
connector. That may help. But for now, this product is much too
hard for mainstream users to install. On Planet Intel, it may be
"quick and easy" to set up. But here on Planet Earth, it's a huge
hassle.
Want to Set Up a Home Network?
Better Get Teenage Tech Support
By RICH JAROSLOVSKY
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Setting up the AnyPoint network is simple. Getting it to work isn't.
When it comes to new consumer technology, I'm what you would
call an "early adopter." (Also known as a "sucker.") So when I
encountered Intel's new AnyPoint home phone-line networking
devices in my local computer superstore, I couldn't resist. In my
case, the goal was simple: allowing the two computers the kids
use to access the Net over my high-speed Internet connection
provided by At Home, the big national cable-modem service.
Setting up the network took me no more than 10 minutes per
computer. I chose to use the external AnyPoint adapter, which
operates through the parallel port of the computer. I detached the
printer cable from the computer, plugged it into the AnyPoint
adapter, and plugged the adapter into the printer port on the
computer. Then I plugged the telephone line from a wall jack into
the adapter, installed the simple Intel-provided software, and
moved onto the next machine.
Then the fun began.
When I turned on the three computers,
two of them immediately recognized that
they were on a network. The third
computer, though, stubbornly refused to
communicate with the other two, or even
recognize them. Even worse, I
immediately lost all Internet connectivity
through the cable modem. During a
nearly two-hour phone call to Intel's
technical support (such support being
provided free for 90 days), I repeatedly
installed and uninstalled the software,
fiddled with arcane Windows settings
that I never knew existed and connected
and disconnected the adapters, all to no
avail. Ultimately, I disconnected the network and called At Home
for instructions about how to reconnect myself to the Internet. (At
Home provided this help for free -- along with a warning that the
next time I called on the same issue, it would cost me $35.)
It took several more hours of phone calls and fiddling before I
noticed an odd thing. When the At Home service had been
installed, it gave my computer a name -- a string of letters,
numbers and characters, including a hyphen. When the Intel
networking software was installed, it recognized the name of the
computer -- except that it automatically changed the hyphen to an
underscore. When I went into my Windows settings and changed
the underscore back to a hyphen, my Internet access was
magically restored. (Intel's software doesn't allow hyphens, I was
later told. When I related this saga to Intel tech support, they
expressed surprise that changing the name didn't disable
AnyPoint. "That's not supposed to work," one tech said.)
Now I had two remaining problems: The second computer on the
network could communicate with the first computer, but couldn't
access the Internet via the cable modem. And third computer on
the network stubbornly refused to communicate in any manner
with the other two.
After still more phone calls to Intel -- tech support was pleasant
enough and full of suggestions for altering the various Windows
network settings, none of which worked -- I finally used a radical
solution for the problem of the third computer: I pulled it out
completely and substituted another machine. For reasons
unknown, the new Windows 95 computer worked where the old
Windows 95 computer would not. Finally, I had all three
computers communicating with each other.
But, except for the computer with the cable modem, still no
Internet access.
More phone calls to Intel and At Home. More suggestions to try
changing various settings in the computer. More frustration.
Finally, Intel tech support essentially gave up. They concluded that
the manner in which At Home and my local cable company were
delivering my Internet service was incompatible with AnyPoint.
While they offered to refer my (by now moot) issue of getting the
third computer onto the network to a more advanced level of tech
support, they said there was nothing more they could do with the
ISP issue. I expressed my disbelief -- after all, At Home is one of
the biggest cable ISPs in the country -- but Intel offered no further
recourse, except to take my adapters back to the store and ask
for my money back.
Then, several days later, my family was visiting some friends in
Washington who have a teenage son. Young Adam and his father
had run a full Ethernet network through the walls of their house in
order to share a single DSL connection. As they showed off their
handiwork, I regaled them with the saga of my AnyPoint
adventure. When I described my problems, young Adam
wondered whether the adapter had a working IP address on my
internal network. He showed me how to run a diagnostic routine
by clicking on the Windows Start menu, choosing Run and typing
in "winipcfg."
I did so when I got home. Sure enough, the adapters on the client
computers didn't have IP addresses. (Apparently the Intel
software is supposed to set this automatically, but it didn't.) I
assigned addresses to the adapters, using information gleaned
from the AnyPoint Web site. Presto! Internet access on all three
computers.
So now it works. And it works pretty well. But a consumer product
it isn't. Leaving aside the dozen hours of my time and the
mounting frustration of trying to get it to work, I had to learn a lot
more about Windows networking than I care to know -- and a lot
more than a typical user should have to know.
My bottom line: If you get AnyPoint, prepare for the possibility of a
lot of frustration. Either that, or get yourself a really smart
teenager.
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