I hate DIAL-UP!

QBVII · #1 06/04/05, 04:04 AM

I totally hate dial-up!
Love living in the country but this dial-up is driving me bonkers!

I've had internet cable ISP and DSL....

We are out in the "boonies".....can anyone relate? More importantly, has anyone gone to sattelite? If so, please tell me which system or whatever, how fast it is, what it costs and if the service is worth is.....thanks for any infornation.

Sigh.......

Pony · #2 06/04/05, 04:56 AM

I have dial-up and I'm not even in the boonies. It's less expensive, and I don't worry about spyware as much (still run spybot, though).

What speed is your modem? I'm running 56K, but remember the days of 300 baud... memories...

Do you run Pop Up Killer or Proxomitron?

Pony!

CraftyDiva · #3 06/04/05, 05:07 AM

I don't think this is a matter of modem speed. Your modem is only as good as the phone lines you use, and usually out of the way (rural) places are on old phone lines. If your phone company can't give you a DSL connection, your working with old equipment.

LiberalCountryBoy · #4 06/04/05, 06:36 AM

You know, when I was in Denver I had dial up and it was painfully slow. So for years I had cable modem (where your internet comes over your cable tv line). It was pretty much instantaneous.
When I moved out here to the boonies and signed up for dial up I was worried.
But, we must have new lines or something because it is fast. Not instantaneous like cable but as long as it works this well I'll stay with it. Two years so far.
For the price I'm happy as can be. They've even started offering dsl but I don't see the need for it.

NWSneaky · #5 06/04/05, 06:45 AM

We are fortunate. Ours is about the first country area that got our locally owned phone company installing all fiber oprtic cables. Works great and no problems now.

NWSneaky · #6 06/04/05, 06:48 AM

BTW --- careful on satellite. Each time you get cloud cover you may or will become disabled Inet wise.

Ozarks_1 · #7 06/04/05, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CraftyDiva

I don't think this is a matter of modem speed. Your modem is only as good as the phone lines you use, and usually out of the way (rural) places are on old phone lines. If your phone company can't give you a DSL connection, your working with old equipment.

In addition to that problem, the older equipment becomes an issue when trying to "push" an internet signal over a certain distance. Before our local phone company went with DSL, we were usually "fortunate" to run at 30K or so (using a 56K modem) ... and we're only 3 miles from the phone company's office.

CraftyDiva · #8 06/04/05, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NWSneaky

BTW --- careful on satellite. Each time you get cloud cover you may or will become disabled Inet wise.

Not only that, but if your living in the north with snowy weather, be prepared to get out there in the blizzards and keep your dish cleared.

MaineFarmMom · #9 06/04/05, 07:09 AM

Is satellite for the computer less reliable than for television?

We connect at 28.8 on a good day, 26.4 the rest of the time. There aren't enough houses out here for the phone company to bother with new lines.

southerngurl · #10 06/04/05, 07:16 AM

We are right on the edge of where you can get DSL.

I am running at 54 Megabytes per second. I thought it was SOO cool when I could first talk on the phone and use the internet at the same time, LOL.

HermitJohn · #11 06/04/05, 07:44 AM

I either connect at 24k during busier times or 26k on a slack time. Actual surfing speed tests at around 19k.

Then recently I get super big slow down at 4pm to 7pm on weekdays especially. I mean it slows to where it takes half hour to load a simple webpage. Thought it was isp, but another isp was only marginally faster. Its the phone system overloaded due to the incredibly fast population increase in this area. Dont forget also that many people only share half a line. It is way of economizing for phone company. They dont brag about it and wont admit it unless you already know that they do this. Works ok for voice service but makes hard limit of 28k for internet. If you have a full line count your blessings, you have hard limit of 56k though you will usually connect 40k to 50k. That seems blazingly fast to me.

I'd love satellite, but sorry cant justify it unless it was making me $$ or monthy price came down to dialup rate. As to spyware/virus crap somebody touched on as possible slowing effect, you want to run windows then you get to clean the barnacles off rather frequently. I use linux and dont have that problem. I guess windows users just like doing all that extra maintenence, not to mention running a bigger faster computer just to handle all that extra maintenence software. Each to their own. I'm just lazy I guess and dont appreciate extra chores for the fun of it nor buying more computer than I need just to run software to deal with such things.

marisal · #12 06/04/05, 10:10 AM

We are having the same issue!! My husband is a city boy, so this is really annoying for him.

I checked into the sat. connection. Way to much money for us!! there was 2 prices:

699 up front 59.99 a month (Roughly)
Or 0$ upfront and 99.99 a month for 15 months than 59.99

And you have to have a clear view of the southern sky. (We dont)

The cable company isn't out here yet, but they said for 1900$ they would come out for us.

The phone company said they are working on it.

So right now I have People PC. I like it WAY better than AOL.

But it is still S L O W!!!

I'll keep waiting!!
It does keep me off line more, which is probably a good thing.

MArisa

mysticokra · #13 06/04/05, 10:11 AM

Our satellite does a fine job. We have DirecWay's business arrangement because we both work from home. It cost about $100/mo. The download speed is around 700K and the uplink is about 70K. That is half of what they advertise it to be, but it is still much faster than dial-up. Out here dial up on BellSouth is around 24K with a 56K modem.

Don't believe the nay-sayers about satellite rain fade. In the year that we have been using the system, I have lost the signal twice during a thunderstorm. That was about 5 minutes before the power totally went out. So, having a cable modem wouldn't have mattered.

The one thing I would caution you on is if your work requirements entail a VPN.
While our VPN will work, it does slow things down. Another piece of equipment would probably solve that problem, but my wife's employer's IT people don't want to take the political risk of known satellite support. (I hate IT politics!)

Runners · #14 06/04/05, 10:21 AM

Out in the boonies, it's easy to spend a bunch on mediocore service - any kind.

NEANDERTECH.COM is reseller that can give you good dialup rates with data compression for cheap! I signed up for a year of unlimited service with "slipstream" compression (I average 3x compression) for a whopping $104.40 per year. I was paying $24 + taxes a month for similar dial up speeds 24-26.4K, and then got hammered with all the line throttling by the ISP.

(that's where they say, 'eh, he's just a schmuck, give half his bandwidth to a gamer, he won't know the difference, blame his modem or computer when he calls... ...and I still own stock in that company!?)

Neandertech is BASIC dialup service, no tech support, you pay - they give you a password and off you go. We've used it since last Nov., and although dialup sucks compared to the stuff @ work - I ain't DL music, movies & viruses at this speed!

Ravenlost · #15 06/04/05, 10:46 AM

I am right there with you on hating dial-up. We're in the boonies too and are the last house on our road. We'll be the last to get any upgrades in service.

When we got sattelite for the TV hubby asked about sattelite hook-up for the computer and the guy said he wouldn't recommend it (some salesman, huh?). He said his customers had so much trouble with it that he considered it a rip-off.

So we are stuck with dial-up. On a good day I connect at 48.0. On a bad day it's more like 44.0. I want DSL!!!

elgordo · #16 06/04/05, 12:48 PM

We also have dial up. On the best day we get 28.8, but ususally 26.4. I can never watch videos and sometimes downloading takes awhile. I'd like dial up or satilite but the expense just doesn't justify trying it! Our neighbors have satilite but they seem to wind up with a lag time of 2 sec. or so. Other neighbors have it also but they don't seem to have the same issues. I think it's the cost that really holds me back! Best of luck!

agmantoo · #17 06/04/05, 04:23 PM

I stay perturbed by my ISP provider due to disconnects and poor speeds. I am even more dissatisfied with my phone provider. I live near the phone switchgear but eventhough Bellsouth constantly promotes its service they refuse to upgrade the nearby switchgear to permit me having DSL. I have tried ever ploy I can think of to get the service upgraded to no avail. My most recent opportunity to access the net at a better speed comes from a startup called Wildblue. This outfit is supposed to offer satellite nationwide shortly (Sept. in my area) at around $50/month. Here is the link if you have any interest.... http://www.wildblue.com/

D · #18 06/04/05, 06:41 PM

It hasn't been that long since even dial-up wasn't avalible in my corner of the boonies. I was relatively happy with 26.4 until I got a job with DSL. Now I'm spoiled!

Pony · #19 06/05/05, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HermitJohn

I use linux and dont have that problem. I guess windows users just like doing all that extra maintenence, not to mention running a bigger faster computer just to handle all that extra maintenence software. Each to their own. I'm just lazy I guess and dont appreciate extra chores for the fun of it nor buying more computer than I need just to run software to deal with such things.

I'd love to run Linux, but we've had the devil of a time trying to figure it out! Got Red Hat a while ago, tried to get it up and running many times, just can't seem to get it to work properly.

Not that we've given up, however. Have an extra computer sitting on a table here in the basement, and every so often DH sits down there to work on it.

Pony!

HermitJohn · #20 06/05/05, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pony

I'd love to run Linux, but we've had the devil of a time trying to figure it out! Got Red Hat a while ago, tried to get it up and running many times, just can't seem to get it to work properly.

Not that we've given up, however. Have an extra computer sitting on a table here in the basement, and every so often DH sits down there to work on it.

Pony!

The easiest way to get started with linux is not installing full blown RedHat, Debian or Suse.

Get a Knoppix live cd or Mepis or Puppy live cd. Then set the bios of your computer to boot from cdrom. Stick in the Knoppix cd and boot. Knoppix most likely will automatically detect all your hardware and boot to desktop screen. It partially loads from ramdisk created in RAM memory, and partially can pull needed programs from the cd where they are in compressed form. You can even surf in just this fashion or there is a script to install to hardrive. Knoppix (and most other live cds) have cheat codes you can manually enter at bootup time if for example you have an ancient monitor or some other special need that isnt automatically detected. Knoppix (and Mepis) the last I knew gave choice at bootup whether to boot 2.4 linux kernel or 2.6 kernel. The 2.4 gives less problems with older hardware. The 2.6 kernel supports more modern hardware better.

Puppy (and DamnSmall and Austrumi) load entirely into RAM memory, thus leaving your cdrom free for other uses. They are that small yet remarkably complete.

With dialup connection, most live cds should either be downloaded and burned on friend's computer with broadband or bought off ebay or one of the cheap linux places. When I want to experiment, I usually buy from one particular cheap linux place. Costs like $3 total shipped cost per cd that would take me nearly 3 days to download. Puppy (DamnSmall and Austrumi also) however are only about a 50mb to 60mb download depending on version and takes me around 4 to 5 hour even with my slow dialup connection. Personally I really like Puppy though I installed it to hardrive and have added more software. I for instance have both latest Firefox and Opera browsers, a bunch of games, Gnumeric spreadsheet (pretty compatible to M$ but smaller and faster than OpenOffice), etc.

Knoppix/Mepis and other larger live cds will use KDE or Gnome desktop and should look simular enough to windows desktop to be self explanitory. Puppy also boots to a win95 type desktop (FVWM95 windows manager which is much smaller and faster than KDE or Gnome). There are few rough edges in Puppy such as changing SCSI emulation when mounting cdrom burner to burn cdr. But otherwise its relatively simple also. The bigger distributions tend to have more intuitive program to do this that you dont have to think too much about. Still Puppy is my choice. Very small and very fast on older hardware. I optionally install it to my hardrive rather than run from RAM memory. Quite intuitive for its size. Be aware that version 1.0.1 is last Puppy with 2.4 linux kernel. 1.0.2 and later use 2.6 kernel which can cause problems with older hardware. Not necessarily , but can. On other hand 2.6 kernel for example has more winmodem support and more modern sound card support built in.

If you just have to have bloatware hardrive version of linux, Mandrake is probably easiest to install.