Our DSL provider is in the middle of going belly-up, so we need to find a new provider fast. Being pretty far out on the DSL loop we don't get full speed, so I'm thinking we'll switch to cable for improved speed while we're at it. The two cable providers I'm looking at are @home and Adelphia. Does anyone have any advice/horror stories about either of them?

-- Chuck (chuck@deadpan.net), February 01, 2001

Answers

I've got Qwest DSL and I'm not that thrilled about it. To be fair, I signed up for the cheap-o part time service. I'm only online about 2 hours a day, so I can't really justify paying for 24 hours of dedicated DSL. But the price you pay is that you have to connect/disconnect several times before you get a connection. My friend at work loves his cable modem, but I think he still pays more than me. The bottom line is that I don't have to worry about voice calls getting through and the speed is better (but not a ton better) than my old 56k...

-- christopher (me@naze.net), February 03, 2001.

Well, I've never had DSL so I can't really comment on it, but I recently (a few months ago) went from dial-up service to cable and the difference is astounding! All those image-laden sites that take forever to load? Downloads of programs or upgrades that you start one day and finish the next? All gone!!! I'm only running a puny 233mhz processor 56m RAM and still the stuff comes in like gangbusters. The extra cost is something to consider, of course. My bill went from about $20 per month to just over $40 but I have an advantage here. My mother AND mother-in-law live with us (wife, daughter and myself..not to mention 1 dog and 3 cats) and my mother has her own computer (mostly used to play solitaire, of course) and she wanted to be on-line, too. She originally had a dial-up connection of her own as we did...running both computers from the same cable through a router has produced no problems and sharing the bill brought the price down to where we were to start with!

-- Mike Durham (oldlodge1@comcast.net), May 19, 2002.