Whew! We haven't had more than 5 minutes to ourselves during the last 4 days at the FMCA convention in Minot, ND. We just loved it! For the whole 4 days, Coach Connect operated a free WiFi hotspot, and we helped lots of folks with their computers. We had a crowd for at least 8 hours every day.



It was so fun to see people learn how WiFi works. This woman was incredulous at how easy and fast it was.



We also learned a lot. It sure seemed like an inordinate amount of problems were with the HP and Compaq computers. And I really learned to dislike the Linksys cards. People who had Sony laptops had very few problems! You probably already know that we like Sony Vaios :-) The most interesting thing was that a lot of people experienced fluctuating and dropping signal. It finally occurred to us that having this many WiFi computers so close together was probably creating RF interference. When there were fewer people it was no problem.

We probably saw 200 people a day using the WiFi and helped many of them with both WiFi and other questions. People were thrilled to get all this free help.


We also gave 2 seminars. The first one had about 300 people in the audience! The second had at least 100.



And, they had a lot of questions.



Coach Connect is also entering the Datastorm market. They arranged with Freightliner to install a Datastorm on their service trailer. Jim helped get it online. One of the problems was that it was originally installed to use the same satellite that we use (117) and Minot, ND is too far north for that to work! So Jim got with the folks from Motosat and switched the satellite to 83. I think we need to get on to this satellite also - it's new and it works from mid-Canada to Panama.


It wasn't all work though. We also had a great time being in North Dakota. That'll be my next post.

sounds like you all are having a good time.

do you have to already own a laptop before you take one of your seminars?

what's it like to be without your home on wheels?