There's a line between being frugal/thrifty/dollar conscious and being an outright cheap bastard, and every now and again I forget about that line and cross over into true skin-flinted-ness.
My laptop has a flaky wireless connection. Having just shelled out to fix one problem I figured I may as well finally pick up a fix for this as well and so hit up ebay. There are lots of wireless cards for sale pulled from my exact model of notebook - they run about $12. But what ho? A generic card for only $5? How can I go wrong?!
My first clue was probably when the package arrived 10 days later with a chinese customs label stamped on the back, posted via air mail and routed through mumbai if I'm reading these stamps right. It's got a wireless card in it, so that's good. There are no identifying marks or numbers on the card, so that's going to make finding software for it hard. After about 20 minutes of searching and three false tries I start to get excited because I've found a solid lead, though granted it's on a chat board for tech support folks in india. It's about this time that I realize I should probably just cut my losses and order a real card for $7 more. Okay, it was after downloading the dodgy indian software and having that not work as well. But still, lesson learned.
Oh, and I got an IRS notice delivered to my house for someone who doesn't live here. Normally I don't give much credence to those "federal penalty for misuse" notice on envelopes but I think this one I'll heed. So all in all an interesting mail day.
My laptop has a flaky wireless connection. Having just shelled out to fix one problem I figured I may as well finally pick up a fix for this as well and so hit up ebay. There are lots of wireless cards for sale pulled from my exact model of notebook - they run about $12. But what ho? A generic card for only $5? How can I go wrong?!
My first clue was probably when the package arrived 10 days later with a chinese customs label stamped on the back, posted via air mail and routed through mumbai if I'm reading these stamps right. It's got a wireless card in it, so that's good. There are no identifying marks or numbers on the card, so that's going to make finding software for it hard. After about 20 minutes of searching and three false tries I start to get excited because I've found a solid lead, though granted it's on a chat board for tech support folks in india. It's about this time that I realize I should probably just cut my losses and order a real card for $7 more. Okay, it was after downloading the dodgy indian software and having that not work as well. But still, lesson learned.
Oh, and I got an IRS notice delivered to my house for someone who doesn't live here. Normally I don't give much credence to those "federal penalty for misuse" notice on envelopes but I think this one I'll heed. So all in all an interesting mail day.
