OT: How do you acces the 'net?

I'm poor. I'm still on dialup.

Since the work I get via e-mail is purely text, I've never had any job take more than 2 minutes to download.

I don't spend a lot of time surfing; I'd rather stitch.

Cable, but I must have it for my money work. I can get a month's worth of dial-up on the spot if my cable goes out for any reason (storms that knock out cables, for instance). It pays for itself exponentially each month and it's tax deductible as a business expense.

On the other hand, I wouldn't surf so much if I had only dial-up. I'd get other things done and not waste so much time and money.

Ah. If it was only me and DH dial-up would be fine. But with an 18 and

20 year old who live on their computers when they are at home, all I would hear is complaints about speed. You are most likely right that with dial-up I'd spend less time online.

Donna in Virginia

"Donna" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I think it is like many things, once you have had the Rolls Royce, you can't go back. I was forced on my trip across the country to use dialup much of the time. Truly, I would sit there and wonder how I ever thought it was so great back at Day One lol

I know now there are many things I would give up first but broadband?? They would have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands lol

I feel much the same way about cable.

I guess I should add, patience is definitely NOT one of my virtues, so if I had to go back to dial-up I would likely throw something at my computer.

Lucille

i'm on webtv. its dial-up. its easy. i can do most stuff you can do on 'puter. only thin unavailable is pdf files-and most sites have alternate html files.

plus i can't get a virus! so no "crashing 'puter"....

oh-its $24.95 per month and well worth it.

The Eagle Nest

DSL through my phone company. For $80 a month, I get the fastest DSL line they have, my land line phone, and all kinds of features on my phone (call waiting, voice mail, caller id, 3 way calling, *69, etc., etc. - most of which I don't use, but which the kids find fascinating) and unlimited continental US long distance. AND the price is set to go down again (it's gone down already once since I got it).

Linda

I was on dial-up (56K) until last year when British Telecomm (BT) installed broadband (ADSL) albeit at just 512K, cost is about 17 pounds per month. Other parts of the UK have broadband at higher speeds (up to

8M) but I don't think it will reach these parts for a year or two.

WebTV is dinosaur technology.

And the price Rita cited is what I pay for AOL.

I'd seriously look into doing it all via satellite. We're investigating changing from cable modem to the satellite.

Cheryl

Bruce, me dear, WebTV was the 'net for the technologically impaired. (Sorry Rita, I'm still a geek at heart) ;)

Cheryl

I must confess that I've never come across the term WebTV. Perhaps here in the UK we are a somewhat behind the cutting edge of technology.

Cheryl Isaak ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

It's available here, has been for quite some time but my nerdy friends say it is very expensive, not reliable and not ready to take over - yet anyway.

I'm hearing this is still expensive and has bugs. But I'm willing to consider it. What's another dish on the roof?

Donna in Virginia

Well, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon on the phone with the phone company. First I've got to say that their customer service sucks. My calls were cut off by them five times. Leading me to get extremely frustrated. And their automated response things would not recognize me when I would say DSL. I finally got a person who understood what I wanted and after 1/2 hour she was able to verify that the DSL test on my phone line did not work. So no DSL. And no idea when FIOS will be available here. The stupid cable company has a virtual monopoly on broadband, at least in our case. I still need to call phone company back and cancel the upgraded phone service we ordered. That should be fun.

Donna in Virginia

"Donna" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

Nothing new there I am afraid. It's exactly the same here, no service, customer comes last because there is a monopoly of two companies.

Last year I finally became so irate at the on again/off again service that I 'phoned the business office and gave them a list of all the days on which I had interruptions of more than a couple of hours without warning. As a consequence, I received a month free and strangely, only a few breaks in service since, leading me to believe the shakeup caused them to check their lines or whatever.

Lots of us do dial-up these days. I live in a rural area & even though DSL is available in some places, the majority of people do not use the internet enough to want to pay for anything more than dial- up. I admit that I get annoyed with my slow connection, but I don't live on the internet so there's no way I would consider paying more, even if we could. It is waaaaaay down on my priority list of things on which to spend "extra" money. :-) Liz from Humbug

You were lucky! At home I'm still on dial-up (free through where I work) but at *24*!!! I've been told our phone lines are too old (nearly 30 years old) to handle all the data. Cable isn't an option, since we live in the country. DSL *might* be an option if we ever got another dish (not likely any time soon). Wireless is available for $40-80/mo but DH, the non-computer-user would definitely balk at those prices for "stupid computers". So, we suffer with sloooooooow response and an inability to download anything much bigger than 2-300K (which takes about a 1/2 hour or more), which is why I do most of my 'puter time at work (as certain people will ascertain - LOL!)!

Joan