RRC Archives

My ISP has a promotion going for cable modem DSL. Can anyone tell me what minimum hardware is recommended for making this service worthwhile?

hmm... dsl and cable modems are different things. DSL is through the phone line and cable modems are through the cable tv lines. cable modems generally have the capability of providing better speeds but do not always do so. they also will slow down as more people in your area use them and during peak hours of use. DSL generally has a cap on the speed but is not affected by amount of users or time of day. both require a speciallized modem generally given to you by the service provider.

if you are used to a modem almost any modern computer(can run win95 or mac os 8.5) will have an incredible improvement in performance and you will be so happy that you will never be able to go back to the listless doldrums of 56k.

(unless of course you are at your parents house or in a kinko's in vegas and you have to suffer suffer suffer to fufil both your obsession to check the board and to actually get some work done)

oh and the computer will need an ethernet card(lan card) and cable. they will probably provide the cat5 cable but it is pretty cheap.


anyway, if you can afford it, go for it. you won't regret it.

ps. if you have more than one machine buy a router(or a hub if you are cheap) and network your house off of your one broadband service. you won't regret that either.

pss. yes I am a geek

I think we knew that bling-bling man! Hope you had a great Christmas Did you hook up with the Chicago crew in Bishop?

Thanks, my daughter's laptop is the only machine in the house that has an ethernet card, so I guess that would work. My ISP is earthlink & I am pretty happy with them. They are offering this through Time/Warner cable. I think that earthlink also offers DSL and that may be where I was confused.

I just signed up with Earthlink this week. Why can't I open my hotmail account on it???

Gretchen wrote:I just signed up with Earthlink this week. Why can't I open my hotmail account on it???

I don't know the specifics of Earthlink, but under ideal circumstances, your ISP won't require you to install special software when you set up the service. All current operating systems (Mac OS X/OS 9, Windows XP, Linux, etc.) come with all the software you need to connect with the 'real' internet (TCP/IP). It seems like most (all?) of the 'big' ISPs (Earthlink, AOLTW, the baby bells, etc.) force you to install 'extra' stuff. I'm not clear on what good this 'extra' software could do for you if you're just web browsing and using 'normal' e-mail. AOL has been the extreme example of this (it could have changed, I don't know) With AOL you weren't directly connected to the internet, you were connected to their network, which has a 'gateway' to the internet through their system. This would interfere with all sorts of 'normal' uses of the internet.

So what? you ask - There's a fair chance that something about Earthlink's 'add on' software is interfering with how Hotmail works. (Then again, maybe not!) This may even be unintentional - Microsoft does everthing in the most non-standard way possible to keep you as hooked on Microsoft products as possible. It's possible that Hotmail servers interact with Internet Explorer (your web browser software) in some wierd way that Earthlink's system doesn't anticipate. I'm sure that Hotmail's response would be "Switch to MSN!" Of course, if Earthlink installs a different browser than IE, then that could be the problem.

One solution would be to switch to an ISP that only uses the standard connection systems, and an OS that adheres to the open standards, like Linux, and an opensource, standards compliant browser, and your own mail server, and ..... oh, never mind.

I recently installed the latest earthlink software on my daughter's laptop. It appears to be use the IE browser and Outlook for e-mail. When I check my e-mail, the pre-existing software asks me if I want to connect to MSN. I just say no & it then works fine. Gretchen, did you have the earthlink software installed on your PC & what version of IE are you using?

you can buy ethernet cards for pcs for less than 20 dollars a pop. you should put one in each of your computers.

yea i met up with tons of chicago people in Bishop. It was weird, sort of like climbing at the red or something. it was a bit cold but tons and tons of fun. and i am getting stronger and stronger. sweet!

Gretchen I've been with earthlink for 4 years and have never had a problem getting on my hotmail account. I use Netscape latest browser. Is your mailbox maxed out maybe?

Cpt. Static, earthlink/timewarner cable access rocks.