Internet provider

[John Galt]

We use an el cheapo local provider. The dial up
is slow for sure, but we are used to it now and
have no need for anything more high-tech or faster.

JG

 

[Shredder]

We use an el cheapo local provider.  The dial up
is slow for sure, but we are used to it now and
have no need for anything more high-tech or faster.

JG

If thats the case stick with it. I switched to charter high speed, and don't think I could go back. It's addicting. Last year our monitor went out and while waiting I for replacement I went to the library to check email and IRA. I hardly could stand the wait times, it drove me nuts. Funny how easy it is to get hooked on high speed.....Shredder

 

[Spanky]

Re:  DSL or cable?

The final straw was raising the monthly fee to $45 when Verizon's DSL costs $30. We haven't had a single outage since installing DSL (three months ago). It may be half the speed but at those prices I can't tell the difference... my ISP customer loyalty is zero. If our local RoadRunner ISP fixes the reliability problems and competes with Verizon's price, we'd switch back in a heartbeat.

The only problem with DSL is that it is susceptible to line noise and distance. If speed is not issue, DSL is fine. In our area, Qwest is offering DSL at 256K plus MSN for $32 and Earthlink is offering 1.5M DSL for $40. We tried Earthlink DSL for only a month since we had so many problems operating at 1.5M. It was fine at 608 Kps.

We decided to switch to Earhlink cable (3M) for $42 and have been very happy with its performance and reliability.

 

[johnblake]

Actually I am an AOL user, and they have a lot of features that I don't want to give up. When I'm traveling, I can walk into any internet cafe and have access to my calendar, address book etc.

Since they have a large subscriber list, the competition will accomodate moving away from them in the future and/or AOL will have to reduce prices and improve service.

AOL got a real bad name in the early days and a lot of AOL naysayers. I have been with AOL about 5 years now and can't complain much.

I didn't mean to pick on AOL, just to point out the kinds of hooks high tech companies use. Heck, I still have stock in AOL -- I mean Time Warner.

Just so you know, Yahoo! offers the features that you mention -- phone book and calender for free. You can even download/upload to Outlook, Palm software, and CVS.

 

[johnblake]

Do you all have an opinion on more expensive, but faster cable vs. less expensive DSL? I'm not a business user, just family all over the place (including Europe) that I like to send pics to, and use Yahoo Messenger. Most of the techies in the family have cable.

For the home user it probably makes no difference, try whatever is cheapest. There is always a chance that cable or dsl will have problems in your location.

I've used both. At our old house the cable would intermittently stop. We switched to DSL because it was $15/month less expensive and it worked fine (better than the cable)

At out new place we do not have a regular phone line which costs around $20/month and is a prerequsite for DSL. This makes dsl more expensive than cable. We're using cable instead with no problems.

Dialup and stingy folks in urban/suburban areas might consider sharing a connection with neighbors using wireless or even wired technologies. In some cities, community networks allow anyone access, for free.

 

[Spanky]

...stingy folks in urban/suburban areas might consider sharing a connection with neighbors using wireless or even wired technologies.

I can actually connect to my neighbor's wireless router since it is not protected. He told me that he does not care if I connect to it. I wonder how many people are willing to share it?

 

[rec]

I have good luck with these guys $3.25 a month
http://vtisp.com/

 

[VoyT]

Re:  DSL or cable?

Nords,

Do you care that your email address would keep changing as you switch from ISP to ISP or do you just bite the bullet and go into every one of your website user profiles and put in the new  email address.

MJ

When we switched from AOL to DSL last year, we bit the bullet and changed the address. Oddly enough, there is a web-based version of AOL mail that we can access with our old screen name and password.
I also have yahoo and mail.com accounts for "junk mail" like filling out surveys,etc. Though I'm about to ditch the mail.com account. Periodically, I'll log in and get an immediate message from my McAffee software that it's blocked a virus ...