What kind of connection do you have?

[KBasa]

Just wondering after reading PMDave's post about dial up.

[riderR1150GSAdv]

Down under in the Keys there was a time when all we had was dial up, as it depended on how far south you lived from Miami. I now have DSL. :clap Some area's in FL still have dial up only!! :cry

[RatSnake]

My little town in northern Illinois was slow to get DSL. As soon as Starband began installing satelite modems in my area I jumped at it. I put up with the dropped connections everytime it snowed and rained because it was still faster than dial up when it worked. Then a few years ago, Covad began supplying DSL over what SBC considered sub standard telephone lines. Worked for me, no problems. :clap

[James O]

Only one DSL provider in my neck of the woods, and at 45/month I'm still crawling along with dial-up. Hopefully, sooner than later, I can join the real world.

[BradfordBenn]

I got cable, and lots of spped. The way my housing development is laid out, I am the only one on the cable loop. It is mainly a result of me not sprining for digital cable, so I have a special wire out to my house from the pedestal and I am the only one on it. It is faster than the two T1's at the office. http://www.unrestrainedhelmet.com/smiles/bolt.gif

[DarrylRi]

Although I'm only 5.5 miles from beautiful downtown Santa Cruz, I'm still over 4 miles from the CO, so no DSL (even though that's how I voted).

Also, the cable ends over 2 miles from my house, and when I asked, I was quoted $4/foot to get it installed. So, no cable, either.

I put up with expensive ($150/mo), relatively slow (128kb) ISDN for a while, but a couple years ago I got connected to a radio ISP. Although they are selling me 256kb symetric service, I have learned that they actually have no way (other than simply turning me off) of throttling my connection. I routinely get 800kb service, and have seen peaks over 2Mb.

The only real down side is that my ISP (gatespeed) uses Above.Net for their backbone connection. Above.Net apparently has managed to piss off a lot of people by not taking action against spammers, so their entire range of IP numbers appear in the SPEWS database. Which includes my computer. So, sometimes my emails get dropped in the bit bucket by ISPs that use SPEWS to filter email. C'est la vie.

[Usedtopilot]

I have cable modem. I had dial up a couple of years ago....it was S L O W.

[BMWBeauty]

I have a cable modem (RoadRunner)..... :bolt ...I had dial up before moving in this house......Never Again.....Definitely Too Slow.....

[rocketman]

I have numerous connections, but I don't like to flaunt it. (not to mention that I'd have to kill you). My SO also has contacts but again it's considered bad taste to tout them too much :D
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Oh! You mean internet connections!!! Well, lets see, there is a little wire that runs from the back of my PC into the wall, from there I haven't the foggiest idea where it goes, seems to work OK though......


RM

[Visian]

This forum is pure pain on dial-up.

Ian

[bullit7801]

I have a 100 Meg/sec office connection to an internet hub, being on an .edu site. My home is less than 5 minutes by car or 12 minutes by foot (about 0.6 mile) from the office, so I don't ride to work. It takes longer to gear up for riding than it does to drive to the office. Being so close, and going to the office nites and weekends too, I never thought it worth the $$ to do other than dial-up at home. Have one of those minimal ISP sites for $8.95 per month and they bill my credit card.

This site is slow on dial-up, but so is everything else. This one is worth waiting for, however. :thumb

Given the above, I don't know how to vote, so I didn't. :doh

tb

[Montana]

Living on the edge of a town provides a "trailing edge" lifestyle for me as far as technology goes. And even though my office is in the heart of downtown and I can open my window and throw a rock at the CO across the alley, twenty feet away, it's not a technology wonderland either. There are wireless receiver sites available for home or office, and coincidentally, the cable company rep showed up at the house at 5:30 pm last night offering cable-based Internet access (finally). We just finally changed from dial up to DSL at home and at the office. However, even though that's what I voted, you should know it's not high throughput. (For $17,000 a month I could outfit this eleven-person office with a screamin' line, but that's not gonna happen.)

[Rich]

I still have the cheesie old dial-up. I actually don't have a problem with it, except when you want to view a thread with lots of photos. Then it's hurry up and wait. I have three sons that would live on the net if it was always connected, and my wife thinks this is one way of regulating their time online. Maybe mine too, huh?

[username]

i complained that i did not have wi-fi, then i met a man who had only dial-up.

[BradfordBenn]

Out here in the midwest hinterlands we are still using smoke signals. Next week they should be installing the string and dixie cup, they are saying by July we should be up to a tin can and string.

[Hodag]

For some reason I want to say 110 volt, but that wasn't one of the choices?
Mark

[KBasa]

For some reason I want to say 110 volt, but that wasn't one of the choices?
Mark

:lol :lol

:buds

[woodnsteel]

I've been enjoying a cable modem for several years now. I also have the luxury of using a custom built PC, assembled and set up by a local guy known affectionately as the "mad scientist". I can actually tell which web sites are hosted on fast servers, and which are not.

[DDHR1150RT]

DSL here! Dialup is like 50s technology, slow and steady.

[wanderer]

Having only had cable for less than a month, I'm not ashamed to flaunt it. I NOW feel dial up is like riding the Iron Butt on a Moped. :brow Sorry I just couldn't resist. :stick

[KBasa]

Having only had cable for less than a month, I'm not ashamed to flaunt it. I NOW feel dial up is like riding the Iron Butt on a Moped. :brow Sorry I just couldn't resist. :stick

For me, a persistent connection like DSL or cable allows the computer to act like a useful information appliance instead of a stand alone processing gizmo. Most of the information I want is out there in the web, not on my desktop and a high speed connection makes it easy to gather that information easily and quickly.

Some of the applications I'm required to use for work are web based, so I have to have a high speed connection to work.

[JetDoc]

I was fortunate to switch from dial up to cable modem about two years ago. Now the only problem I'm having is while shopping for a new house, I won't even look at it unless it has high-speed cable available. It'd be like going back to an R65 after riding a K1200 all year. I'm just not ready to slow down that much! :wave

[DarrylRi]

I was fortunate to switch from dial up to cable modem about two years ago. Now the only problem I'm having is while shopping for a new house, I won't even look at it unless it has high-speed cable available. It'd be like going back to an R65 after riding a K1200 all year. I'm just not ready to slow down that much! :waveThat's exactly right. I had DSL for about 6 months before moving to a house far enough out in the sticks that there was no DSL, no cable... I paid a fortune to have meager 128kb ISDN service, but I just couldn't face dial up again.

[GlobalRider]

I already dish out $620 a year for the full cable TV package to watch sub standard programming. I'll be damned to pay double that for cable TV and high-speed internet. Besides, as it stands now, I can't read as fast as my dial-up can download.

I've got better things to do with $620 extra dollars.

[pmdave]

Interesting survey. I suspect that the results will be skewed in favor of DLS etc. because those of us who are limited to dial up don't have the patience to do much surfing.

Our local P.U.D. has been installing DSL lines around the county, but it's a considerable expense, and all the folks who aren't into computers are suspicious it's just a boondoggle. Due to the distances involved, it's questionable whether PUD will be able to get its investments back. And since they are trying to recoup their installation costs, they can't provide service at a reasonable price.

I work out of my home, so there is no "office" to use for communications. We have Dish Network, and I know I could get faster downloading via the antenna, but that doesn't solve my problem of uploading large files. I get by with burning CDs and mailing them by the US snail service.

So, as a computer user, I'm stuck in the "Honda 70" age. But as a motorcyclist I have lots of great roads to ride without having to spend time threading my way through city traffic to get there. And as a homeowner, I'm remote from cable lines, but that also means I have lots of clearance from neighbors. I could throw a rock in any direction, and wouldn't be able to hit anyone. I wouldn't mind having all this elbow room and DSL too, but my priority at this point in life is for elbow room.

pmdave :wave

[DarrylRi]

I work out of my home, so there is no "office" to use for communications. We have Dish Network, and I know I could get faster downloading via the antenna, but that doesn't solve my problem of uploading large files. I get by with burning CDs and mailing them by the US snail service.When I started working in the computer biz, we used to joke that nothing has the bandwidth of a delivery truck full of mag tapes.

So, as a computer user, I'm stuck in the "Honda 70" age. But as a motorcyclist I have lots of great roads to ride without having to spend time threading my way through city traffic to get there. And as a homeowner, I'm remote from cable lines, but that also means I have lots of clearance from neighbors. I could throw a rock in any direction, and wouldn't be able to hit anyone. I wouldn't mind having all this elbow room and DSL too, but my priority at this point in life is for elbow room.Well, I understand what you're saying completely. I guess I'm lucky to have line of sight to Mt. Loma Prieta (yes, that's the one lying over the epicenter of the 1989 World Series Quake), and therefore can get a radio link. You ought to see if there's someone providing this service in your area. You might be interested to know that rain has no effect on the bandwidth. ;-)

[Traveler1]

I have cable modem. I generally look into 2 other BMW sites before logging on to the BMWMOA Forum. It's really slow compared to the other sites. Not only initially getting in, but also in accessing the different threads. Don't know what the problem is, but this site is much slower than others.

[Braddog]

I've got a cable modem for home use, and standard network/ethernet to probably some REALLY big pipes. It's pretty fast, but needs to be.

At home, I've set up a wireless network (very secure, by the way), which works great. I can sit in the family room in the recliner, laptop in hand, doing whatever I want. In the summer, I can sit outside on the deck, too, if I wish.

[Burnszilla]

So, when is the bmwmoa's forum server going to be upgraded? It's getting painfully slow. Is it a money issue??

[KBasa]

We're not sure. Sometimes, it crawls and other times, it flies. There doesn't seem to be any kind of correlation with the number of users or anything else either, which is leaving us a little mystified.