Kevin Gilmore is a network administrator at MicroDisplay, a small company in San Pablo, California, that uses several Wi-Fi access points to give employees the freedom to roam around the office with their laptops while remaining connected to the Internet.
But these days, Gilmore keeps encountering a problem that many Windows XP users know all too well: the sudden and inexplicable loss of their wireless Internet connections. As Gilmore knows from the flow of support calls, there"s little point in trying to find a permanent solution to the problem. "It will and does lose connection for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and then picks it up again, seemingly randomly," Gilmore said. "At first, it was so aggravating. And now, it"s considered a normal factor of working with Windows."