The Definitive Guide to Comcast High Speed Internet Cable Modem Installation
By Paul Lyons
The rain is finally coming in. Not huge storms but consistent showers, at times even heavy. Then we see the clouds breakup for a time while a new front gathers over the Pacific to the West. Friday I went up to our good friends, Walter and Sara Barnes’ place on the Russian River. Walter attended Vermont University with my mother in the late 1940s. Sara is an excellent painter. I went up to help them get their Comcast Internet all set up. They just got the package deal. Did they bring a modem? How old is the computer? Does it start up? To these I got vague responses. They had used the computer a few years back but not recently. I decided to go up there prepared for anything.
I downloaded what I could find about setting up Comcast Internet – compatible modems, necessary cables, cables they are said Comcast often leaves you without. I put together my "Third World Indiana Jones Computer Survival and Resoration Kit" – all necessary software included system software, external DVD drive in case the local one is toast, external hard drive for possible document backups, laptop. I went to Office Depot and got a cable modem. Headed across the street to the Home Depot and picked up coax cable, USB cable and an Ethernet cable just to be safe. I was not going clear to the Pacific Ocean, where nothing but red wine, strong coffee and olives are available and be short a measly USB cable. I was ready.
So I show up around 11am. The sun is shining down on Sara’s art studio. The rain is taking a break. We talk and snack for a while and catch up on the latest for a few minutes. I then drag myself over to their three-year-old Dell with XP Home Edition on it and all is good. The computer is running fine. The Internet is actually working. The Comcast people must have rented them the modem. All we do is create a simple email account and everything is pretty much set up.
It was not logical how to actually then access your new Comcast email account (logging in a Comcast did not work) but no matter, I set up an email account for them at Gmail. Good enough. I then proceeded to get rid of their crappy Netscape 7 browser and other silly stuff. Installed Firefox and IE7. Downloaded the latest Flash, Acrobat Reader and iTunes.
The last step was simply dealing with their settings. I gave then huge icons on the task bar for only the things they needed. Made a few icons on the desktop. One was a Firefox link to gmail that said “Click here to read Email” and another was a shortcut to Word that read “Click here to write a letter.” I tested this stuff about ten times and made sure that they were automatically logged in to their email. I sure hope that works for them. I then got them set up with podcasts but their generation lives in such a linear world, that suspension of temporal rules is over their heads. Computer and music is not a true concept for these septuagenarians for the most part anyway. I take them to some cool news sites and teach then how to look up something on Google. Perhaps I could have taken them to youtube but only so much information in a day.
I then made Walt work the computer and find his email, write an email and receive an email. It went well but I realized something that I had not thought about too much lately. This computer stuff is actually pretty complicated. Gmail has a zillion features and options. Too much for most. Often times the hierarchy of the information is poorly done and must frustrating is the fact that the key things that one accesses are hard to find. The typography is way too even. I also realized why Macs are so often the choice of older people. While the right click aspect of the PC has its uses for the advanced and proficient user, for someone just trying to send an email it can cause sheer havoc. Perhaps there is a setting to turn off right clicking for certain users.
The Microsoft world, like most entities tries to use language to their advantage. When I installed IE7 it came with the “Malicious Software Removal Tool.” Pretty good name. A lot better then the concept of your computer having a “virus.” “Malicious” is a good definition of what is going on when you get some crazy spyware on your computer and ads for insurance companies start popping up a odd intervals.
Microsoft uses language in another application that is a bit more deceptive. When you are authoring a program in Visual Studio it is called a “solution.” This nomenclature assumes something – that you have a “problem.” Perhaps there is not really a problem or perhaps the problem arose because there was a “solution” in the first place. Sending a letter to someone after typing it out on a typewriter was not a problem. Listening to old records on the hi-fi was not a problem. Playing a game of double solitaire with real cards on the front porch while sipping lemonade was not a problem. Perhaps all the technological “solutions” simple create problems of another sort.
We took some photos of Sara’s paintings. We talked about a new web site for her painting and bounced around some domains.
On the drive home I thought of new user interfaces for a simple email application. Four tabs – In Box, Write an Email, Sent Emails, Drafts
That's it. On the bottom would be some basic utilities – Trash and Settings. Maybe I am on to something. Comcast High Speed Internet set up. That's easy. Sending and receiving gmail. Forget it.
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