posted on August 20, 2000 09:21:24 PM new
I am using @home cable service, and the email service is absolutely horrible -- email just vanishes and is so unreliable, for both sending and receiving. The speed of online services is great, but if the email is so bad, I don't want to keep it. I am thinking of switching to DSL. Any experiences/ comments? Is DSL as fast as cable? Reliable email? Thinking of going with Mindspring/Earthlink DSL. Any feedback appreciated.
posted on August 21, 2000 12:30:39 AM new
Hi Jema:
I used cable for about 6 months and grew to hate the service. When it worked it was lightning fast but the constant "router problems" and overeaction to suspected e-mail hacking (they would shut the e-mail service down for 3 days every time they assumed someone was trying to break in) and the robot voice on the customer service phone line telling me the same thing everytime I couldn't get online, "We're sorry, we are experiencing router problems" and will restore the @home service as soon as possible", drove me nuts. I am a happy camper now on DSL. It's not quite as fast as cable at it's best but the reliability is more of an issue with me. I reside in Manitoba, Canada and used the @Home service through our local cable provider so I don't know how much of the problem is just here in my location or if it's a general problem.
posted on August 21, 2000 06:46:53 AM new
We use Road Runner cable, and the service is great. DSL in our area is 2-3 times more expensive, and not available to everyone either. Our RR is $40 per month.
Thanks for that interesting link. That IS sneaky. Limiting bandwidth and then re-selling it again is terrible. I wonder how they decide on which area will have people that would fail to notice a lack of speed in their connection?
posted on August 25, 2000 02:32:55 AM new
I think your problem is probably due more to @home rather than cable service itself. @Home is notoriously bad - I've seen *lots* of complaints about them. I use Charter Cable myself and it's been great. But it depends what you can get where you are. Both cable and DSL have advantages and disadvantages. Neither is perfect, nor is either one clearly superior to the other. Of course, many people don't have a choice - only one is available (if any).
posted on August 25, 2000 05:42:22 AM new
I found an interesting site with some software for speeding up broadband connections such as cable and DSL. We are using the 15 day trial, and the speed difference is pretty awesome.
After you install it, you can check your connection speed before running the Optimization, then you reboot and check your speed again. Ours increased quite a bit, and I downloaded a 32 mb file last night and hit 217kbps speeds on the download. The fastest we had ever gotten before was around 120, 90 was more the norm.
