Initial review: Google CR-48 Chrome Notebook

When UPS knocked on the door earlier this week, I was expecting to find some Christmas packages from out-of-town family members. When I opened the door, there were three packages out there, two of which were indeed Christmas presents. But the third had a return address I didn't recognize. I was wracking my brain trying to remember if I'd ordered anything. I asked Shels if she'd ordered any gifts for me so I wouldn't accidentally open something I wasn't supposed to see. But no, we couldn't think of what might be inside. I cut open the box to find another box inside with this image emblazoned on it:

Fix WiFi speed on CR-48 Chrome Notebook

I'm in the midst of writing my quick review of the CR-48 Chrome Notebook (which I'm still amazed that Google sent me in the first place), but I wanted to take a minute to share a quick tip.

When I first set up the CR-48, I connected it to my home WiFi network. It connected without issue, but was very slow. I initially blamed the slowness on the CR-48 itself, thinking it was just a crappy, slow product. But then I connected to the Verizon 3G connection and webpages started loading extremely fast.

Turns out the problem was with the encryption setting on my router. For some reason, ChromeOS can't handle TKIP encryption very well. By simply setting the encryption to AES, the problem was solved. Webpages now load lightning fast on WiFi, which is the way it should be.

So if you have a CR-48 and find WiFi to be frustratingly slow, don't blame the machine. Simply change your router's encryption to AES and you should be good to go.

Now that that's taken care of, I shall return to writing my review. :-)

.