Another Smug Mac User

Today I got even smugger, if you can believe that. To cut a long, long story short, Sabrina, my beloved, a victim user of Windows Vista, was getting "Local Access Only" while connected to our trusty router that has always worked before, in our heterogeneous network of Mac, Ubuntu, and Various Windowses. The solution, in the end, was simple: "ipconfig /release" followed by "ipconfig /renew"*, but the path was labyrinthine. Innumerable fora record the despair and frustration of countless vista users facing the dreaded "Local Access Only" message

At the risk of repeating myself: the Mac is the first computer I've had that Mostly Just Works. The biggest annoyance with this thing is the no delete key - but there is a partial solution - KeyRemap4MacBook

But Vista? How can they break DHCP - something that's been working for over twelve years? How do people who are not technical deal with this?

(*) In case you came to this post in despair and frustration: here's how to run ipconfig

1. Hit Start -> Run
2. Enter "cmd" and hit return. A "command prompt" window will appear
3. type "ipconfig /release" and hit return - this should get rid of any out-of-date connection state
4. type "ipconfig /renew" and hit return - this gets you new connection state
5. close the "cmd" window

Theoretically, and with a bit of luck, and assuming nothing else is wrong, and possibly after a slight delay, you'll have your internet again