Last week, I was away on business and when I tried to connect to my office PC using my 3G Datacard, I was unable to.

Back at the office using a wireless connection, I was able to connect “remotely” with no problems, so it’s not a problem with either my PC or my laptop.

I am going away for a few days soon, so I have just tried again and failed again. So a telephone call to the support number from Vodafone’s Mobile Connect software help files was made. They can’t find the datacard’s number in their records but then when I tell them it’s a Vodafone Business account, they redirect the call to Vodafone’s business centre at Newark. After 40 minutes on hold - I kid you not – I finally get put through. They are apparently experiencing high call volumes – never a good sign…

Once past the people who DHAFC (Don’t Have a F*****g Clue), I finally got through to a techie called Kevin who went through all sorts of troubleshooting before deciding that we needed to set up two configurations in the software: one for regular web browsing and webmail, etc. and one for establishing a remote desktop connection. Unfortunately, the version I had downloaded very recently from Vodafone didn’t have the ability to set up multiple configurations, so he set up an FTP account for me to grab version 9.2 which when installed and set up now seems to work fine, if a tad clunky as I need to switch configurations depending upon what I need working.

Of course, the fact that earlier versions of the software and/or the settings at Vodafone worked just fine before the “upgrade” with none of the profile switching is neither here nor there. I wonder if Vodafone hired Microsoft’s Windows Vista team to write it…

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