Home Hookups

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

The fantasy was simple: I'd be sprawled out on the couch in the den Tuesday night, watching my man Bernie Shaw do the Election Day returns. At the same time, tapping at my laptop, I'd be editing dispatches e-mailed from TIME Daily's daring political correspondents to my desktop computer and beamed seamlessly right into my lap over my new, personal, wireless home network.

This was a moment I'd waited for. I've got a bunch of computers at home, but until now, none was networked because, frankly, it's just too damned hard. Who wants to drill holes, pull cable and figure out how to route data between a bunch of machines in different rooms? Not me. Yet there's a growing need for a simple solution. By 2000, half of all homes that have PCs will have lots of PCs. Networking them saves money, since even the dumbest machine will be able to share files with the smartest. Or connect to a single printer. Or tap into the Pentium II in the home office and blast out over the Net on its 56K modem. In February 1999, Intel plans to start shipping a chip that will be built into both computers and peripherals, allowing them to network through the phone jacks in your house.

In the meantime, a number of companies, including WebGear and Proxim, are offering inexpensive ways to connect the computers scattered throughout your home without the hassle of running complex (and expensive) grids of cables and routers between them. I decided to try Diamond Multimedia's HomeFree Wireless, since I know and use Diamond's excellent graphics card. The $199 DeskTop Pack connects two computers by radio waves; you can add as many as 15 others for $100 each. And for an additional $129, you can buy a HomeFree PCMCIA card and hook in a laptop.

That was the dream. Reality, however, had other ideas. I just couldn't get my network to work, and the instruction manual was woefully devoid of troubleshooting tips. Cursing foully, I called Diamond customer support. I detest manufacturers that don't provide toll-free support to help fix their poorly designed or documented products. Diamond had me wait five minutes--on my long-distance dollar--listening to something called WOHN (the World on Hold Network, believe it or not), before the tech guy picked up. Phone number? he asked. I hissed it. Name? he asked. I hissed it. "Hmmm," he said. "Don't you write for a magazine?" Gratified that anyone outside the credit bureau recognized my byline, I calmed down, and we set to work debugging the infested HomeFree.

As it turned out, that process lasted the better part of two days--roughly six hours of my time. It took almost two hours just for the very nice tech guy to figure out why the network wouldn't connect to my run-of-the-mill printer. Helpful as he was, the experience bodes poorly for a product geared toward the average, hapless home consumer. While my wireless network finally appears to work, I'd recommend that you don't buy HomeFree until it comes out with a far better instruction manual--and a toll-free help line.

Learn more about home networking at timedigital.com Watch Anita on CNNfn's Digital Jam, 7:30 p.m. E.T. Wednesdays.