This is my hail mary to see if anyone has any ideas on how to make my TiVoToGo work on my laptop. Unfortunately, I'm tech-literate at a 5th grade level but not tech-savvy so little bumps are over my head. I've tried calling TiVo support and I've tried the TiVo support forum. Basically they both tell me that it's my firewall but I have no access to my (corporate) firewall and changes/alterations are simply not possible (short of hacking it somehow, but being able to watch Lost on an airplane is hardly a good reason to potentially get fired if discovered). If I need to make any changes to my firewall, I might as well return the TiVo tomorrow and just get a cable company DVR to simplify my remotes/boxes in my stereo/TV set-up.

My TiVo is all set on my home wireless network (standard SBC DSL with Linksys router - no problems with my corporate VPN or my wife's standard 5-yr old obsolete laptop even) - it connects via the web to the servers to do everything it needs to do, I can remote-schedule programs and all that stuff. But the software on my laptop can't locate the TiVo so I can't transfer anything to my laptop....

Not sure if there are router settings I'm having troubles with (but that doesn't make sense to me since the TiVo gets thru to the web no problems and I can get to the TiVo from the web no problems) or if it's just simply my firewall and I'm out of luck. The only other possibility I've thought about, but don't know enough to know if this would help or not - is that I have an un-networked external hard drive that I only use to store digital photos. Could I hook that up to my network and use it somehow to get programs off the TiVo and then transfer the files to my laptop's hard drive? I don't care much if the hard drive is protected that well I suppose - if someone really wanted to look at my wife's friend's g-rated birthday party photos from 2 yrs ago, more power to them.

Any help would be much appreciated! I'm about ready to toss in the towel but thought I'd throw out a quick hail mary.