So I did it. Ordered an iPad2 (despite the knowledge that the 3rd generation will hit the market soon). And what shall I say? Crap so far.
Trying to get this thing to work with the WLAN router at my parent’s home (I am here in Iceland, they’re in Germany), unfortunately fails because of a very silly negligence on part of the Apple designers.
And I’m not alone. So during the initial setup the WiFi-only iPad2 will prompt you to enter the WLAN key. My mom had to do that several times, and we even downgraded the key from a 63 character one to only 15. Still no luck. Restarting the gadget doesn’t yield a result either. There is simply no way to get to the MAC (hardware) address of the device without first configuring it – which, you guessed it, requires a WiFi connection to be already established. Very creative thinking 😕
Even entered the suspected MAC that the router had recently seen, but no luck with that either 😡
Next try some time during the weekend.
// Oliver
1) Bring iPad to Starbucks and set it up using their open WiFi
2)…?
3) Profit!
So you suggest that driving 120 km to the next Starbucks may be cheaper? Besides, German law restricts open access points, so things will likely look bleak once you get there 🙂
s/Starbucks/Café with free WiFi/ 😕
But I remember getting free WiFi all over Frankfurt in 2009 and 2010. Is this a new law?
The point remains that this is a horrible design.
Not that new, I don’t think. Are you talking about Frankfurt itself or the airport?
I reckon their are always people defying the law and I remember there was some kind of initiative going on to build a mesh of APs in several cities, but the main issue remains: anyone not securing his/her AP can be held accountable for whatever warsurfers do on their net …
That’s a huge incentive to secure your stuff and keep it closed tightly 🙂
It was in April 2010 and 2011.
There was a bunch of open WiFis around Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof in 2010, including a couple of Starbucks on Kaiserstrasse/Kaiserplatz.
In April 2011 I think I only used the passwd-protected WiFi in Frankfurt Hostel, so I’m not sure if there were any open WiFi hotspots last year.
Hmm, ok. Interesting. Maybe I missed some legal changes there …?