Saving the day

My (Virgin) broadband connection has been down for almost the entire last 24 hours. Although it recovered in time to post this, I would have been without connectivity if it had not been for this dongle - very limited bandwidth and expensive to use, but so glad to have it to fall back on.

So why is it on a PC and not the usual Mac - well, my MacBook Air with USB 3 has driver problems. Basically it will not recognise the existence of this device if you connect it direct to the MBA. There is a way round it tough - connect a USB hub with USB 2 ports, and plug the dongle into that. MESSY, and it took me quite a long time to discover this when I tested it out a few months ago.

At least only by broadband was affected - friends who use Virgin cable TV lost that for 24 hours too. I use Sky (for F1 access), though that wasn't without its problems too - I got up at 05:00 this morning to watch qualifying, but due to major power problems in Australia, all that was seen for the first 30 minutes were apologies for no coverage; when normal service was resumed, the wet weather meant that the start of qualifying was delayed, and in the end only the first part of qualifying was possible, so I have to stay up to the early hours to see the remainder of qualifying, and soon after that the race itself.