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Wii Worries Worked Through
So yesterday Teri picked me up at work. Before we drove over to pick up Sebastian, we did a little Wii-browsing at Best Buy (it's in the lobby of my building). While we were looking, I saw something that made me gasp.
It was a Wii accessory: a little stick, not much bigger than a regular flash drive. You plug it into a USB port on a computer with a broadband connection to the internet, and BOOM! your Wii has a wireless signal!
It was only $34.99, so I splurged.
When I opened the box at hom, though, my heart sank. The manual said that it was designed to work with USB 2.0 ports, and wouldn't work with USB 1 ports.
The bastard who designed my piece-of-shit computer used the cheapest possible components whenever possible. Even though USB 1.0 was out of date when I bought my computer, USB 1's were all that the son-of-a-bitch gave me.
But hope springs eternal, so I installed the software and plugged it in. And to my amazement, it worked - kind of. It was horribly slow, taking ten minutes or more to do something that the Wii expected to be done "in a moment", but it worked and was able to upgrade the system. We were even able to get online, although again it took five minutes or so to get news or weather.
Even at that slow pace, I have to tell you: the online Wii experience was fucking amazing. Words fail me. And they have a ton of games that I'm dying to buy, including a lot of my favorites from the old Turbo-Grafx. Best of all, they have Donkey Kong and the side-scrolling arcade version of Super Mario! I loved that game.
Later on, though, the connection stopped working. And no matter what I did, it stayed dead. So today I returned the Wii connector.
I figured I needed to get a wireless hub, which is a technology I haven't dealt with yet. I'd read that you could get them for $50 or so, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zarhooie swore that they were easy. So I skipped lunch today (which would have cost $8-9) returned the Wii connector ($35), and bought a Linksys Wireless-G router for $49.99. I barely had enough money to cover it, but payday is tomorrow. And I've got the Wii monkey on my back, bad.
My understanding is that all I need to do is take the plug of the regular internet cable connection which leads from the cable modem to the ethernet card on my computer, and plug it into the router. Then I can use the second ethernet cable (supplied with the router, I already checked) and plug that connection into the computer, giving me the same connectivity. The computer doesn't have a wireless card, of course!
Once I've done that, I'll get the Wii to connect to the router, and tell the router to allow the Wii to connect, and everything should be set. The Wii will connect to the internet 24 hours a day, allowing our little Miis to parade onto the systems of our friends.
Although actually, we don't have any friends with a Wii right now. Teri's mother has one, but she doesn't have internet access.
Does anyone out there have a Wii?
It was a Wii accessory: a little stick, not much bigger than a regular flash drive. You plug it into a USB port on a computer with a broadband connection to the internet, and BOOM! your Wii has a wireless signal!
It was only $34.99, so I splurged.
When I opened the box at hom, though, my heart sank. The manual said that it was designed to work with USB 2.0 ports, and wouldn't work with USB 1 ports.
The bastard who designed my piece-of-shit computer used the cheapest possible components whenever possible. Even though USB 1.0 was out of date when I bought my computer, USB 1's were all that the son-of-a-bitch gave me.
But hope springs eternal, so I installed the software and plugged it in. And to my amazement, it worked - kind of. It was horribly slow, taking ten minutes or more to do something that the Wii expected to be done "in a moment", but it worked and was able to upgrade the system. We were even able to get online, although again it took five minutes or so to get news or weather.
Even at that slow pace, I have to tell you: the online Wii experience was fucking amazing. Words fail me. And they have a ton of games that I'm dying to buy, including a lot of my favorites from the old Turbo-Grafx. Best of all, they have Donkey Kong and the side-scrolling arcade version of Super Mario! I loved that game.
Later on, though, the connection stopped working. And no matter what I did, it stayed dead. So today I returned the Wii connector.
I figured I needed to get a wireless hub, which is a technology I haven't dealt with yet. I'd read that you could get them for $50 or so, and
zarhooie swore that they were easy. So I skipped lunch today (which would have cost $8-9) returned the Wii connector ($35), and bought a Linksys Wireless-G router for $49.99. I barely had enough money to cover it, but payday is tomorrow. And I've got the Wii monkey on my back, bad.My understanding is that all I need to do is take the plug of the regular internet cable connection which leads from the cable modem to the ethernet card on my computer, and plug it into the router. Then I can use the second ethernet cable (supplied with the router, I already checked) and plug that connection into the computer, giving me the same connectivity. The computer doesn't have a wireless card, of course!
Once I've done that, I'll get the Wii to connect to the router, and tell the router to allow the Wii to connect, and everything should be set. The Wii will connect to the internet 24 hours a day, allowing our little Miis to parade onto the systems of our friends.
Although actually, we don't have any friends with a Wii right now. Teri's mother has one, but she doesn't have internet access.
Does anyone out there have a Wii?
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No wii here, but that was kind of expected since I've never owned a video game system of any kind. (I've used ones owned by others, but never felt inspired to buy one).
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We could have a barbecue, get a few gamers together, etc. Although I fear that I won't be able to get
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They do charge for downloading games, of course - generally, between $5 and $8 per game, although a few are a little more. The games include some of the best TurboGrafx-16 games (I was amazed to see Military Madness, an awesome game), Nintendo 64 games such as Super Mario 64 and Star Fox 64, and some arcade classics like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros.
The internet browser was free, although it's a beta version. I hear that the full version will roll out later this month, and will be free if you get it before June.
I also downloaded the "Everybody Votes!" channel, which was another freebie. Not bad, although so far not that exciting.
The weather channel is superior to online weather channels, I think. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to deceive you about the internet access: it has limitations, or at least the beta version does. It uses Opera, but it can't play videos. And I think I've heard that it has problems with some Flash animations.
Also, for the first time I feel as if our TV (a 35" model, I believe) is too small. At normal viewing distance on the couch, it's very hard to read most text. You can zoom in, but then you have to look at only a part of the page at a time. A bit inconvenient.
The computer remains the best way to do serious work on the internet, and I imagine that it will remain so even when a keyboard accessory comes out for the Wii.
Hmm. This should be its own post, I think.