I’ll admit it: I hate being stranded with nothing to do. It’s one of the things that has bothered me about taking the van back to the dealer for service–I’ve spent more than enough time trapped in a small room with old magazines, three strangers, and Jerry Springer on the television. This morning I took it in for an oil change and sat down with my laptop to write out a couple of outlines for articles. Lo and behold, there’s a wireless network. Oh, not at my dealer. The fancy Acura dealer next door, though, has an open wireless net and I was next to the window. Three bars symbolized happiness and productivity for about an hour this morning.

During all this short-lived joy, I couldn’t help but notice that Vista does a pretty good job of managing wireless connections. I particularly like the division of networks into public, home, and business, with different levels of protection for each. It’s a good thing.

I’m somewhat less impressed with the power management settings. Normally I like to keep my laptop on high-performance, fire-breathing, full afterburner mode. When batteries are carrying the load, though, I’m willing to ease of on the horsepower to get a battery life that goes beyond double-digit minutes. Vista offers three pre-set power schemes, with a setting that tells the machine to switch schemes depending on whether or not it’s plugged in. Trouble is, that last piece doesn’t work. “Balanced” is a weeny way to go, but it works for now, and I’ll keep with it until I figure out how to make the switch automatic.

Off to Las Vegas for Interop next week…more from Sin City.

Categories: General computing