Who else has no option but dial-up?

Im usually around 45 and up mostly around 48 and its not that bad. I know some with satt that is slower than mine etc.

I think alot of peoples slowness problems reside within their computers.

you can buy brand new computers that are junk. I have a ten year old un updated desktop with a whopping 8gig hard drive that runs circles around my uncles new fancy 1500 dollar rig.

my laptop is about two years old and will out pace my sons brand new unit that cost twice as much on the same phone line.

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What we have here...is a failure to communicate.

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I have heard if there is static on the phone line, it will slow your computer down. Is there any truth to that? We do have static on the phone in the room where my 'puter is and I just wonder.

We have SLOW dial up at our homestead in northern British Columbia, Canada, and DSL in Vancouver.

We get by because our service provider has WEBMAIL, which is the best! Without webmail business would be awful using dial up, because we get so many large e-mails with large attachments (drawings and pdf files.)

Dial up makes the net NOT attractive and slow, but it's OK.

Of course we miss the wireless aspect of DSL more even than the speed.

Often at the homestead we have four laptops (mine, Nancy's, older son's and daughter's when they are visiting.) It can be a connection ballet.

Alex

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Thou art That

I am currently connected at a blazing 24 kbps. over the dial up... I am surrounded by tall trees here on my hilltop, no cable internet, or DSL.. I am more than 5 miles from the nearest telephone switching station, so no way Jose on DSL. No cable or Satellite TV here either!!!!!!!

Besides - when I travel I can take my laptop, and connect using a phone line which you can not do with cable or DSL. I had a friend a few months ago that has Satellite Internet, tell me I was living in the past with my slow connection. My view for Satellite Internet is blocked by trees almost 100 feet tall, and I am not cutting trees to pay for high speed downloads, when what I use now is sufficent for my needs!!!!

So I will stay with MSN (Mighty Slow Network), I did have AOL (Almost On Line) years ago. For a while at the old house down the hill, I did have high speed cable internet. My room mate was a mobile public notary, and she needed high speed connection for downloading large documents. When downloading music was free and legal, I used dial up for downloading them. Just start it when I went to bed, and see what I had in the morning!!!!

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Smarter than the average bear, sitting here on my hilltop 80 acres in the fog above the ocean...

"Life is tough, but it is tougher when you are stupid." - John Wayne

One option to look into is called WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) and it is starting to become more available. The problem is that most of the companies to offer it are horrible at marketing themselves and so they're harder to locate (at least from searching the web). To give you an idea of what to look for here are a few I've been researching in an area we're looking at property. To give you a great example of how unknown they are a neighbor who works from home has been using satellite a couple of years and hates it, told him I just got WISP and the company and he had never heard of them even though they've been around for years.

http://www.bluewirelessdata.com/springtown.asp (this is a coverage map of where their wireless towers cover)
http://www.skytex.net/service.htm

To start your search here are a few pointers:
- Do a search by the county you're located in, google example: MyCounty TX High Speed Internet OR MAYBE MyCounty TX WiFi Internet
- Check this site, their search function stinks but search the page by county, cities that are close, etc. (Control-F)
- Call around to any businesses that might be in your area and ask about high speed internet, also contact the closest chamber and ask them as well.

We could go satellite, but the cost is insane. DSL goes for $14.95 a month in town, but isn't available here. I keep inquiring, but I don't get any more than an automated response as to DSL becoming available.

Ruth

Trixie - Too much static and it will not connect at all. Don't know about some static slowing it down. I just had a line go bad, lots of static, and the dial up would not connect at all.

No dsl or cable out here. There is a wireless about a mile from me, but there are enough trees, etc that I don't think it would work. Plus rather expensive and I can get along without it.

A little static will slow the connection down. We have static when it rains. I call the telephone repair man but by the time he gets here in a day or two the static has cleared up and he says he can't fix it because he can't find it. Anyway usually I connect at 28.8 but when there is static it might be 14, or if the static is bad might not connect at all. I'd love to connect at 45 or 49 as DrippingSprings does.

You might be surprised at where a satellite will work. We've lugged ours around on a tripod and have yet to be somewhere where it won't work. This past Christmas, we were parked up in a completely wooded campground outside of Fulton, MO. I was sure there was no way we'd get reception, but we did.


The Wandering Quilter's Life in a Box!

DS lives about 1/2 mile down the road from us - we live on a country road, he lives in a subdivision. We get cable and much to his disgust, he can only get dial-up. He comes over here to do downloads.

Dial-up, at 46.6 most of the time. It's good enough for needs. I'd rather use my money for other things....also the reason I only have three TV stations.

Yes, static slows down your internet connection. I had the phone company fix my line.....it took them 5 tries at different times to finally find the problem.

we had dial up for years and only went to satelite when DH started on line classes, we where going into town 3-4 times a week to use wifi and found with gas and coffee it was cheaper to go to satelite.
kmac

We have only dial up. Too far in country for cable and the sat is not here either. We do best we can from house but go about 1 per week to public library to use their computers. We are used to it

I am only 800 linear feet past the cutoff for DSL
My next door neighbor has it!!
Our dial up is horrible... on a good day, it disconnects every five minutes - more often it's every 3-4 minutes.
I've been begging the phone company to extend their service.

just dial up here too. I miss my DSL

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Jessica

Homestead / Nature Journal ~ A path is made by walking it ~

We could get DSL through our satellite but when it rains the satellite goes out so that would leave the connection unavailable for the computer. Also, DSL through satellite is more than our budget could handle. Cable comes out this way but DSL isn't available through the cable company on our road yet and besides the cable connection is awful. We have bellsouth here (the new AT&T) but DSL isn't available on our road through them yet either. LOL

So I have dial up and happy to have it no matter how slow it is.

southrngardngal-Jan

We can only get dial up at home. We had the wireless internet guy out a few weeks ago and he tried everywhere to get a signal, even climbed up on the barn roof! But no dice.

We want faster internet so my wife could work from home every now and then, but satellite won;t work for the kind of conection she needs. It has to be DSL or Cable and I don't see either of those hitting our road anytime soon.

When we had intenet access at home all that was available was dial up. After a few years of that we decided to cancel b/c our local library has T1 service witch I love :baby04: , so I come over for an hour or so a couple times a week and check the email and in here too. I have to drive right by here if I need to do anything in town so I find it convient and I don't stay on line for hours shopping(ha ha) or just looking at a bunch of garbage either.

We only have dial-up, very slow dial-up. Dh keeps saying I should ck out sat, but I think its too expensive.

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formerly known as HaloHead
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"... And what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8

You all should try to add "modem strings" to your modem properties. If you find one that works, it really speeds up the dial up. I used "secret strings" for years before DSL came last year.

Go to your computer, find out what Modem you have, and put that Modem name and number + modem string into google, and do some reading. Would also work to put your computer model # + modem string, can bring up pages and pages of strings to try. A string is just a secret code for your modem. Mine would dial up at 56 every single time. (56K modem)

You might have to try one after the other (checking speed after connecting, re-starting after trying another, but hopefully you'll find one that works.

Good Luck!