Does Amtrak have a deal with Microsoft?

[MARC Rider]

OK, so I'm sitting here in the Club Acela in Washington, and I ahd been spending the past 20 minutes tryinf to log on to theWi-Fi. My computer said I was connected, but Every time I tried to open my browser I got and error message saying the connection was interrupted. I've been having this problem at various stations in the NEC for the last couple of months. By the way, I was using Firefox on Windows 7.

Then for some reason, I thought maybe I should use Internet Explorer. I opened it, and lo and behold, I connected fine, as you can see,. I ahvene;t had this problem on board the trains, Firefox works fine. So what's going on here?

 

[Acela150]

I used to use Google Chrome all the time with no issues. It must have been your Firefox.

 

[benjibear]

Amtrak guest rewards site does not look right in IE but looks fine in Firefox and Google Chrome.

 

[MattW]

I've found the same issue with hotel and hospital WiFi. It's really the only reason I keep IE on my computers, some stuff is just written to only work with Internet Explorer for some reason. Except for a few cases, it probably isn't the hotspot provider, or their software provider having an exclusive contract with Microsoft as much as it is the software developers choosing to only support one browser.

 

[RRUserious]

Not sure what the problem discussed here is, but I have found similar things happening at home. It has something to do with security features of Firefox. They work silently and transparently, and you bump into barriers in accessing sites. Might have to do with an "illegal certificate" or something. Once in a great while I do switch to Explorer and get in. But that may simply be the countless holes in Explorer security, for which they release patch after patch.

 

[SarahZ]

I encounter the same thing at home. If I unplug my laptop and use the wireless, Google Chrome causes all kinds of snags. IE works just fine. It's annoying.

 

[jis]

Not sure what the problem discussed here is, but I have found similar things happening at home. It has something to do with security features of Firefox. They work silently and transparently, and you bump into barriers in accessing sites. Might have to do with an "illegal certificate" or something. Once in a great while I do switch to Explorer and get in. But that may simply be the countless holes in Explorer security, for which they release patch after patch.

If you need to use IE to open a specific site you can do so from inside Firefox. Get the IETab plugin. You can then open a single tab or window using the IE renderer instead of the Firefox one. This cause IE authentication and authorization mechanisms to be used in that specific window/tab instead of the Firefox ones. I usually use that to work around intermittent or site specific problems.

The biggest problem I have with Amtrak's WiFi is that in many cases the 3G connection that I can setup using my iPhone tethering is faster than the Amtrak provided WiFi. C'est la vie.

 

[goodnightjohnwayne]

Are Macbook users having the same issues with Safari?

 

[mfastx]

Ah, trusty ol' IE. Old, reliable, IE.

 

[Donctor]

Are Macbook users having the same issues with Safari?

Not recently. The last time I had this problem was in August of 2009, when the NYP Club Acela wifi only worked with Safari, rather than with both Safari and Firefox.