Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12418&Form.ShowMessage=637584

Check the link for details... 'tis my pathetic contribution towards sprucing up the OT forum, and to help out one lucky soul otherwise cursed with a crappy modem :) Note: As stated there, the prize is only those items that can already be downloaded from Free Stuff here that I happen to host... and only one person will get the CD. Oh, and obviously you have to be a member of R'osity :) /P

I dunno if cable modems should be excluded though; I have cable and sometimes i get some real slow connections... I got it coz it's cheaper than the dial-up...

Cheaper? From what I've seen, broadband cable is normally twice the cost of dial-up, and that doesn't include the usual cable TV fees. I'm paying almost $50 for cable, whereas dial-up would cost me $19.95. How much is it in your region?

No comparison here ... it's only $39.99/month. Cable-TV fees?? Totally unrelated. Even if it was more than dial-up, I'd pay it. There is no going back ... you'd have to pull the cable modem and home network from my cold dead hands. This is of course assuming you're paying for an extra (unlimited service) phone line for your dial-up. If you're sharing a phone line ... well, it's not even a fair comparison whatsoever. -Tim PS> Wife and I are laying in bed on our respective laptops, surfing wirelessly. She's watching hi-res movie trailers +hile I'm on this board and downloading 100+ meg game demos. Only possible with broadband and a home network.

Here on Long Island, you only get so many local calls freee then you pay. We moved to cable because it was costing us $80-$95 in phone bills, plus all the waiting to get online. A 56modem ususally got on at 17. Cable here can be just about as slow, but at least it only costs about $30 a month and I don't get kicked off.

17? As in 17 kbp/s ? If your cable modem is going that slow you need to tell your provider, that would be ridiculous. If people in this area dip below 1000kbp/s we are ticked. We were getting 2500 - 3000 kbp/s before the @HOME debacle. Now it averages about 1200 - 1500. I miss the extreme speed, but it's still wonderful, and quite a bargain. -T

yup 17-18 was average. They claimed it was old phome lines in the house, but it was the same in the cottage with the new lines. Too many people, too few hubs I should plug intu the phone line and take the test. probably would win. I don't know how to take a screen shot though.

Cable modems do NOT use phone lines. I'm confused ... do you use DSL?? World of differnce there ... and I would believe (although it's still dispicable) 18kbps. Also has to do with distance to phone company hub. Another thing to verify is, we're talking about little "b", not big "B" ... right? Kilobits per sec, NOT kiloBYTES, right? -T

My figures from Diamond Creek outside Melbourne Australia, just outside Cable and Broadband coverage using a V90 dial-up modem. 37,333bps...costs US $10 per month...unlimited download but 4 hour bumpoffs. Telephone charges are a rip off with line rental and service fees plus US 15cents per phone call and 10% goods and services tax for dessert. Broadband or cable plus a second telephone line all up would be just under US 50 bucks if I could move my PC 2 miles closer to the "Big Smoke" does this rate a few tears? Tommy.

here's mine :)

Well, I don't qualify, being on dsl. But, I was curious... 1242 download and 293 upload. I must be sitting on one of Earthlink's hubs. :) Carolly

Here in the UK, creaky old dial-up is still the norm at around $21/month, and you usually get bumped off at the 2 hour limit! (Useless for large downloads). Connections can often be very unreliable too. I've had countless ISP's in the last 7 years, and all about the same quality. Also, I usually have to get software, such as Internet Explorer and DirectX, off a magazine CD as opposed to downloading from the 'net. My speed has got better recently though, from 40000bps to 44000bps and even, shock horror - 46666bps! ;-) I heard somewhere that moving the modem up or down a PCI slot can sometimes help. Sounds weird, but it often works! Hope the faster options get much cheaper here soon. (No wonder we call this place "Rip Off Britain") Dave :-)

Well here is my entry. Pitiful Hmmm? Not only that I couldn't upload it right away I tried 5 time before it would go. Now remember this IS with a 56k modem. Really sad Huh.

You just gotta love a cable connection in a rural area :)

Well, I'm sure I have the worst connection. In fact, I can't even enter the contest. My modem only runs for a short while before it just stops. It is 56K V90 modem and through the telephone lines in our subdivision, it can only connect at 28.8. And then it stops about every 3 - 5 minutes. You have to right-click and disconnect and then connect again to start the cycle all over again. I do all my downloading at work during lunch and burn a CD to take home. So, there's my sad story. (what makes it worse is the houses in our subdivision are priced from $250,000 to $500,000 and no DSL available)

As Traveler and Timoteo1 said....you gotta love a cable modem :) Ed

I'm paying $29.95 for cable (as aoopsed to $49.95 for DSL and dial-up is $19.95 for the first 150 hrs and $1 per hour thereafter. So cable is actually cheaper.

Ahhh, yes ... but THESE were the glory days. Alas, they are gone. But I'll still take 1200 - 1500 kbps any day. (BTW, that's 356KB/s, *NOT 356kb/s ... as in about 1 megabyte every 2.5 seconds. Also, the "always there" connection is MUCH more significant than people realize or think about. It eliminates so many real world references it's amazing. No phonebooks, encylopedias, dictionaries, etc., etc. in my house anymore. Music CD database lookups, zip+4 look-ups, time-servers ... they're all automatic, fast, and hassle-free. Let's hope broadband is available to everyone within the nest couple of years. It will be better for everyone using the Internet, including current broadband users, IMHO.