Microsoft Firefox?

I recently had the opportunity to attend a two-day meeting at the Microsoft mothership in Redmond. We were told that we could access their wireless network during the meeting, and each attendee was given a unique ID/password to connect to the network.

The process was simple in theory: Enable your wireless network card, browse to any Web site and your browser would then display a logon page to enter credentials and proceed to the Internet. However, we soon discovered that many users in the meeting could not actually get to that initial logon page, and we were stuck without Internet access.

During the meeting, Microsoft's own IT support came to the room and jumped on some users' laptops to try to figure out what was wrong. But being The Quintessential Geek, I decided to troubleshoot this problem on my own, even during the presentation itself. (Ssshhhh... don't tell the presenter.)

Microsoft's IT people never did find the problem, but I am happy to report that yours truly did come across a solution: use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer! With Firefox, the Microsoft WLAN access page immediately came up, and all problems were solved.

Needless to say, there were some red-faced Microsoft folks out there. But the humor of that situation certainly outweighed any embarrassment!

-TQG