I was sitting in a coffee shop last evening, waiting for my wife and
working on a news release for a client, when a guy at the next table
with a new Dell laptop running Win 8 came over and asked me if I could
get the shop's wi-fi running on his machine.

He kept getting the error message "limited wi-fi capability," or
something like that.

We rebooted his machine and I tried to get the wi-fi searcher going so
it could find the signal in the shop. Even that wasn't easy...the
machine just would not find the local signal. He needed to check his
email to find out where he needed to report for work that evening (he
works for a utility company and his workplace varies a lot during the
week), so I just let him use my Macbook Air.

He really was ****ed at Win 8 and his Dell when he left, and muttered
that he was going to give the machine to his son and get himself "an Apple."

I never did figure out what was wrong with his setup. Anyone have a
clue? I don't have a way to check it out because I don't have a Windoze
computer.