If traveling from city to city and staying at different hotels is your game; then you definitely travel with a laptop so you can get your office work done while your on the road. Problem is, this laptop could be a loaner laptop from your company and many times, its configuration settings are already set.
The biggest pain is to find out that your laptop is not configured properly and you will not be able to get out onto the internet whether you are in your guest room or in a meeting room. So here, I offer some tips for you to ask your IT department to configure for you so that once you are away, you will still be able to utilize your laptop.
- Make sure your hardware is working properly, which means, either your ethernet port or wireless card is working.
- It seldomly happens but please make sure that your ethernet wired connection or wireless card is enabled.
- Make sure that your computer is set up for DHCP, which essentially means that you will be automatically obtaining an IP address from the ISP, in this case, the hotel’s own internet access gateway.
These are the general requirements for you to get out onto the world wide web. But what if the first three steps were take and you are still not able to get out onto the internet? I have more tips for you and these are more like workarounds.
- You see the internet connected icon in your task bar in the lower right hand corner but when launching a browser window it takes you no where. *To resolve this, please check your browser’s settings to make sure you are not using a proxy server. Sometimes, you won’t be able to change this setting; a workaround is to have another browser like Firefox available.
- You see your wireless connection icon in the task bar but your unable to search wireless networks with Windows configuration. *This means your wireless card is using another software. Look through the icons in your task manager; it’ll be in there and you will be able to change the settings in there.
- My internet works on and off; why is that? *This happens a lot and there can be multiple reasons but please check your cable connections if you are on a wired connection. Another case is laptops conserve energy when it is not plugged into a power source, and it may disable your internet capabilities if the power is running low. You can either change your power management settings or keep it plugged to a power source at all times.
Overall, these are some of the main frequently asked questions I have encountered in the past about why a guest could not get out onto the internet with their laptop. Most of the time, it was not because the internet was down or broken but it was the settings on their computer that was the obstacle. This article is to provide some knowledge and to prepare you for your business trip. At least you will sound a lot more knowledgeable when you ask your IT manager about making sure the settings on your laptop is correct before you travel out. After all, I know how difficult it is to troubleshoot and do these configurations over the phone. But if all else fails, please call your IT manager or department, they know their own hardware the best.
Hi Daniel, what parts are you having trouble understanding? I think I should probably include a warning that some working IT knowledge is needed. But I think you can definitely use this article and approach an IT manager before traveling out for business. Let me know if I can clarify any parts.