Modern Technology: Not So Wondrous!

Back in August I posted about the new router I bought. Well, turns out the Linksys WRT54GC is a piece of crap, at least when it comes to wireless. Awhile back I tried running World of Warcraft on my desktop PC, which is connected to my network wirelessly. I ran into major lag problems but I wasn't sure why, so I just installed it on my laptop - connected physically to the router - and I play it there.

Friday I purchased Guild Wars, which is far more graphically intensive than WoW. It "ran" on my laptop, but not very well, even with all the graphics settings at their minimums. So I decided to try it on the desktop and see how well it worked. Graphically, it was stunning. But I ran into the same lag problems as I did with WoW. Which indicated to me that the problem was not with the software but with the hardware somewhere (or the drivers or network settings or something).

Doing some research (which I wish I'd done originally) I discovered that the router I had really sucks when it comes to wireless. It's not super terrible, but if you are using a computer in another room for something more than web-browsing and downloading your e-mail, it's not worth getting. Today I replaced it with its "bigger brother", the WRT54G (which is the same size as the old router I compared the little one too). After I got that set up I saw signal strength in the desktop connection that I never saw with the WRT54GC. And I was able to play Guild Wars for a couple hours with no noticeable problems.

In other news, I've started playing Guild Wars. I'm not giving up on WoW yet, but there's really only one person I know who I can group with on WoW but there are 5 or 6 on GW (I prefer playing with people I know rather than strangers). So far my opinion is mixed on GW, but I need to evaluate it more to give it a proper review. I've played WoW for about a year now and GW for about 4 hours. There's a lot of differences, but I do like it so far - in part because it's different.