posted on August 23, 2002 01:16:49 PM new
I'm still in the dial up mode. Hate the slowness, but don't have a clue which way to go for improvement. Our Direct TV service is making their service look interesting, but so are the rest. Any hands on yes or no opinions would be appreciated. Thanks.
posted on August 23, 2002 01:31:36 PM new
Satalite service is for those who do not have any other kind of high speed access available. You can only Download by satalite, you upload by Phoneline at the normal modem speed. You have the same problems of using a phoneline while on the internet. Overall, it is only a good solution if you have no other option for high speed access. I used Cable Modem for a while. It was great when I started, but as the service got more and more popular, it goet slower and slower until I could not access the internet at all from 7:30 pm to 11pm. I then swiched to DSL. That worked great when it was run by Verison. They were bought out by adelphia, and service is a bit spotty (out once or twice a night usually for not more then 5 minutes at a time). I do not have any other options at this time for High Speed, so I will stick with Adelphia unil they end service or until something else comes out.
posted on August 23, 2002 02:34:32 PM new
I have Earthlink DSL and haven't had any disconnection problems since I started the service several months ago. After using a dial up service, the speed of DSL seems fantastic to me. My daughter has Verizon DSL in Pennsylvania and she is happy with their service also.
Another daughter in Maryland has cable and her connection is slower and less reliable.
posted on August 23, 2002 03:42:22 PM new
I switched my television programming from Cable to DirecTV because I was sick of the snide attitude shown by the AT&T monopoly here that owns all of the telephone lines and all of the cable companies here in Portland, Oregon. Satellite is a pain if you don't need it, I found out, because if your VCR doesn't have a DirecTV converter built into it, you can't watch one channel while recording another. Plus, my dish gets a bit out of alignment at times with the temperature and the picture gets pixilated ~ signal degradation. Worse, I just invested in a nice ATI All-in-Wonder video card for my pc to process video onto DVD and CDs and I can't take advantage of television viewing (and digital recording onto my hard drive) because the video card has a cable converter built-in, but not a DirecTV converter. Oh well, it's just so much fun to be able to thumb my nose at the door-to-door AT&T salespeople that I haven't given up on it just yet.
I wanted to convert to satellite broadband, but that looks like its not for me either, after reading what Dejapooh has to say about it. My Cable connection is just as fast as it always has been, because when it got slow there for a while, we all complained to AT&T and they came out and ran another connection from the street fiber-optic cabling and moved 50% of the current users over to it. Now it's just great anytime of day.
posted on August 23, 2002 08:46:54 PM new
Check to see if you have mmds wireless available. It's not widespread, but sprint offers it in some urban/suburban areas. You have to have line of sight to a broadcast tower. It's a terrestrial signal, NOT satellite and is therefore not bothered by storms, which satellite is. It's also much less equipment and monthly cost . You have an antenna on your roof which is connected by ethernet cable to a cable modem which is connected to your computer. There is NO phone line involved. It is 2 way wireless. I have it thru a local ISP and if I ever again have no choice but to dial up, it will be goodbye internet. In the rural place I live, the phone connections stink, and cable or dsl is not offered. I pay 39.95 a month for a 512k download and 128k upload speed, I could get 1054 and 256 for 10 bucks a month more. It is the same price as a dedicated phone line plus ISP charge and is easily 10 times faster. Whatever you do, when you finally bite the bullet and get some form of broadband connection, you'll wonder why it took you so long to decide. Dial up, as my students would say, "sucks"....
posted on August 23, 2002 08:49:51 PM new
Check to see if you have mmds wireless available. It's not widespread, but sprint offers it in some urban/suburban areas. You have to have line of sight to a broadcast tower. It's a terrestrial signal, NOT satellite and is therefore not bothered by storms, which satellite is. It's also much less equipment and monthly cost . You have an antenna on your roof which is connected by ethernet cable to a cable modem which is connected to your computer. There is NO phone line involved. It is 2 way wireless. I have it thru a local ISP and if I ever again have no choice but to dial up, it will be goodbye internet. In the rural place I live, the phone connections stink, and cable or dsl is not offered. I pay 39.95 a month for a 512k download and 128k upload speed, I could get 1054 and 256 for 10 bucks a month more. It is the same price as a dedicated phone line plus ISP charge and is easily 10 times faster. Whatever you do, when you finally bite the bullet and get some form of broadband connection, you'll wonder why it took you so long to decide. Dial up, as my students would say, "sucks"....
posted on August 23, 2002 09:17:06 PM new"You can only Download by satalite, you upload by Phoneline at the normal modem speed. You have the same problems of using a phoneline while on the internet".
That's not true, or at least it's not true of the two sattelite services that I'm aware of: earthlink and Stargate (? - was it Starband?). Both are two way high speed connections using two sattelites each through two supplied sattelite modems. There is no dialup modem whatsoever involved in any aspect of the always connected service.
They up and download at the same speeds (or close to the same), and I know that because I am currently using the earthlink version because it's startup promotionals were better.
I do think that the AT$T (attbi.com) cable service that I had in my former location was a little quicker than this stuff is, but the difference is hard to notice.
