[rant] Verizon Internet installer: painful and what’s worse, totally unnecessary!
In Europe, to get ADSL working, you plug the router in, and usually the first page you open asks for your username and password. You enter them, you get going. The most you do is opening 192.168.1.1 and putting down some info.
In the US, you are forced to download and install an installer, which will take a couple of hours out of your life, doing essentially nothing but setting up your username and password (and maybe a few router settings, but since they ship the router themselves they can preset them already). There is no option to skip the screens which tell you how to plug an electric adapter into the wall socket! And every screen loads in a few seconds meaning you can’t just press next next next and keep going.
And their installer refuses to run on Mac OS Snow Leopard, saying that the system I use is too old. Luckily I had a spare Windows laptop! Otherwise no internet for me.
You wait, going through tons of unnecessary screens, agreeing to unnecessary agreements, getting installed SH*T on your computer! I was baffled to see Verizon actually FORCES you to install the Yahoo stuff! If you deselect both the Messenger and the Toolbar, you can’t continue!
If they would rape my main computer this way, instead of the Windows partition of my old MacBook, I’d be very annoyed.
Why couldn’t I just plug my router in like elsewhere in the world!?