17 March 2010

There's just no way to install Fastnetz USB wireless

There's just no way to install Fastnetz USB wireless

My father has been having chronic problems connecting to the wireless router. Finally I got him a wireless card. It was a Fastnetz USB wireless card. Looked good, price was reasonable, seemed like a good buy. It came, it was in good condition, it fits into the USB slot.

But he still hasn't been able to use it because the installation software's window is too big.

Maybe it works on larger screens, but on his machine, there is simply no way to tell this installer software "Now accept the data I've entered and proceed". He tried everything. Then I tried everything. It won't let him or me:

  • Scroll the window (there are no scroll bars)
  • Trigger the "OK" button via the keyboard
  • Shrink the window
  • Move the window up.
  • Find anything related to it in "Help".

There is simply no way to get to that "OK" button. And for want of an "OK", the whole product is useless.

What irks me, besides the fact that this completely new equipment can't be used, is that this is a completely gratuitous problem. I shudder to imagine what was going through the head of the programmer who created this piece of idiocy. Did he think he was showing off his programming chops by pointlessly setting a fixed window size? Did he use an interface builder, and check off "fixed size: __ x __" and "scroll bars: Off" on some form and think no more of it? Was this design actually approved by some sort of quality control people who never bothered to look at it on a screen smaller than 100,000 x 60,000?

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