Limited or no usability

A few weeks ago we decided to buy an iMac in addition (or, as a replacement) to our four-year old Windows laptop. Clearly, my opinion is biased because, after making an investment like this it is much more difficult to see the disadvantages. Clearly, my preference for MacOS X is also influenced by the fact that it is cool to own a Mac.

Whatever the reasons are, the bottomline is that working on a Mac is so much more pleasant that doing or trying to do exactly the same things on a PC. Yes, in most cases it is possible to do exactly the same things on PCs as well. If you enjoy downloading updates. If you enjoy learning about DHCP, ports, DNS, etc. If you enjoy restarting your computer three times in a row. I do not enjoy to do any of these things. That's why I like my new iMac.

To be more precise, after getting the iMac we kind of forgot about the Windows machine. We only noticed recently that it is having problems connecting to the internet (through the same wireless router that both Macs are happily using ever since we told them to do so). A warning appears that says something about "limited or no connectivity". If I try to "repair" the connection, it keeps thinking for a while and theen it says that it could not fix it. What's next? I go online (on the Mac, of course), and do a search on "limited or no connectivity". Lots of results, one is more obscure and useless than the other. After trying several of the suggested tricks, I just give up.

So we just spent at least a few hours trying to fix this -- with no success. The PC has still "limited or no connectivity" -- in other words, it is pretty f%^$#@! useless. I am not saying that I never had any problems with the Mac. But even when I had some, it was fast and enjoyable to fix them. I know it sounds like I have joined a cult, but it does feel like my life has changed since we have the iMac.

PS. To be fair (a couple of weeks later), since then we had comparable problems with the Macs as well, so it is unlikely that it was a Windows XP issue. Still, I love the new iMac :) .

PS2. Finally, it works. I replaced the Linksys router with an Airport Extreme base station and set it to share the IP address that it receives from the cable modem between the other machines. I have to admit however that it was *not* easy to set it up the right way; with the default settings, we could only connect one computer at a time and it took ages for us to hit upon the right combination of settings. I contacted Earthlink for help, but the advice I received was pretty close to useless.