What Would You Do if You Were Stuck on Dial-up?

After going insane I would shut down all graphics and stare at text only. No youtube, no Chris Pirillo live stream. Ouch!

uhhhhhh. No idea.

Being a geek I would actually move house just for faster internet and do everything possible to do that.

I would get a 3G subscription service, even though the 5GB cap, just for things such as youtube and facebook. Use the dial-up service for the huge programs you have to download. Besides that… cry my eyes out. If I was on dial-up I would cry.

I would move!

I’m going to be flippant and say, “move. move now. move to a town with cable/dsl.” :-)

Simply Die.

MOVE, boy, MOVE !!!!

I would move – I have moved because of this. Well, maybe not solely because of dialup but one can always find other reasons to move. My father has been on dialup forever and as I am the only person to assist him, so I still suffer it from time to time as well. Many things do not work at all as they’re designed for broadband and the rest works poorly. Even daily virus updates can take a good part of your day on occasion. Broadband is huge today but it just can’t be everywhere. If it’s a must have then you need to put yourself in front of it.

Wow, that really sucks for that dude. i have used 6gb bandwidth already today and 5gb cap along with no broadband would be killer. I always have Streamdesk and Twitter open, all day, yeah even when chris is asleep. What sucks more is you own a business and internet is a much have for businesses, i would probable get a wireless dongle because you can get them with a 20gb cap witch is not very much but alot more than 5GB. Personally, if i had a business and broadband and bandwidth was must have i would move house. I really do feel sorry for you. Im 15 and really cant live without broadband and my Unlimited Bandwidth. All i can really say is ‘I feal so sorry for you’

Pack ur bags and move. Ive been following this issue for a few years and have come to the conclusion the service providers are not going to come to you…you have to go where the jobs are and the same goes for high speed access…go where it is..at least thats the way I see it now..in the future I see the internet to be like osmosis…been smokin abit too much here..lol

Kill myself.

On a more serious note: Wireless, and if I’m going over the cap, get two, its better than waiting 5 days for a 1mb file to download.

I’d move. Especially because I work on the web.

Dear Pirillo,

I am an enthusiast for all tech and all I can say that dial-up is my last resort as a wireless user. To my knowledge, technology for the past 5 years have been dial-up and I have been sick and tired of it ever since. I switched to DSL because of my college work as well as using social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Gabriel Sanchez

I live way out in the sticks in California (population 200 – not including the cows) – can’t get satellite internet even, and best dialup speed on the old phone lines is 26.4kb. (No cell service either obviously.) I work online at home. You adapt, but yes, it’s getting a little old.

For instance, our dialup service has an image optimizer that makes pictures look terrible, but downloads pages much faster. (Can turn it off when I need to see an image clearly.) I often surf with images off until I need to see something or some pages take FOREVER to download. Also, we have one phone line but use a program that tells us who is calling so I can decide whether to interrupt my work and get offline to take the call.

I have no problem using twitter or IM or facebook (once the flash on a FB type game is downloaded, the page loads faster next time if it’s still cached of course), but like Shean, videos take forever, If it’s less than 30 seconds, and I’m not busy, I let it download while I’m doing housework – takes less than an hour – zippy! (sarcasm) I don’t download music, and online interacive gaming is out of the question.

Weekly, I make a list of all the links and videos that I want to see, and all the big images I need to upload (I’m an artist), etc., and head to town and use free wifi at a local restaurant.

So it’s ‘do-able’. But after a while, all the workarounds REALLY start to wear you down and take the fun (and spontaneity) out of the experience. And yes, more and more sites are using flash (which I automatically disable with the NoScript FireFox plugin unless I’m sure I want to see it) or become unwieldy on dialup.

So it can be done. But it’s not pretty.

The telecommunications infrastructure, especially in rural areas (where ‘upgrading’ isn’t a priority because of the low populations) need complete overhauls.

And I’m pretty sure I need to move. ;)

I would move. ASAP

Depending on the speed of the Satellite ISP vs Dial-Up, I would suck it up and get the Satellite ISP if it has the potential to stream video, allow online gaming, ect..

In other words, how much faster is Satellite Internet vs Dial-Up?

Last summer I went on a trip and our RV had Satellite Internet and a Wi-Fi Router (only usable when parked and the dish is pointed) and youtube worked for me out there….

I’d look and see if wireless internet is available. Basically it’s broadband via satellite towers, similar to cellphone towers. Zeecon (http://www.zeecon.com/) is one such company. They had service out in Kingsland TX, in the middle of nowhere. I’d start looking at a company like that and see if they are in the area or petition a local telecom company to set something like that up.

Omg luckly I’ve got broadbrand even though it’s only 200gb dwn dude good luck with getting cable that got to be expensive aswell

Sorry I meant 200kbs down

Find a local WISP and give them a call! I work for a WISP in St. Louis, MO and we can get service to most everybody if he have a tower within 5 miles.
http://www.onelasvegas.com/wireless/

What would I do? I would move to a place where broadband is available. Obviously, the government says they want to improve the availability of of broadband in the US, but ask yourself, do they really care, if you have the finest internet available. You would have broadband internet quicker if you moved, a you won’t have to deal with not having fast internet. Yes, moving is a pain, and hard sometimes, but sometimes is the only option.

If you really can’t move, perhaps you could purchase a cheap laptop and visit the closest library with a broadband connection, at the library you could download and to the stuff you need. Even if you have to drive back and forth, it still might save time in waiting for downloads to finish.

I would probably use a friend’s computer to do things. I like to make videos, and I upload some of them to YouTube. I don’t think a dial-up connection wouldn’t be able to handle the uploading process, or video playback. I would end up having to put the videos on an external hard drive or flash memory card and upload them somewhere else. If I had to be stuck on dial-up again, I would be re-living a nightmare. I do NOT like dial-up (then again, who does?), and had to put up with using AO-Hell, er, AOL for a year when I first got my computer in late 2004. It took two minutes for the thing to load up at the start, games wouldn’t load, it would take forever to load a page with a ton of things on it, and an early version of YouTube would NOT work. In fact, it didn’t even use then-newer versions of Flash, probably the reason why a lot of pages with things using Flash wouldn’t load. Oh yeah, and you couldn’t use the phone and be on the web at the same time. Then, I finally got DSL…

I would keep the dialup for your business related downloads since they don’t limit you. But get the Wireless for everything else. You can get dialup for $10.00 a month. And whatever the 3G costs it will be worth every penny if it’s your only reasonable way to get high speed internet. If you have a computer repair business it’s a tax write-off anyway right? And, flashing back to my dial-up days (which weren’t that long ago for me, as my love for computers was overshadowed by festivals and partying 24/7 untill my 30’s kicked in) hardware/controller based modems are the way to go. It’s hard to even find a decent dial-up modem anymore. Stay away from software based “WinModems”. Every bit counts when you’re shooting for that 52.6 Kbps, or whatever it was in that neighborhood where the FCC limits your ass. But you’re never getting 56, so I don’t know why they ever called it that. And make sure you’re using the highest quality phone wire you can get your hands on, and the shortest length you can achieve. US Robotics Performance Pro is a good hardware based modem, if you can find one. Maybe if you had a few computers connected to a KVM switch, and each one had its own modem and seperate phone line, you could view one while you wait for the other to load. Or if this is going to be a long term situation, you could build yourself a little cluster with all the slave nodes having their own modems and phone lines and working together to process the browsers load on the head node. Am I right ? Problem solved… Mark it !

Hey, I’m from Malaysia (the country above Singapore for those who don’t know)

Back here, the broadband hasn’t been around for too long and dial-up is still used in quite a number of house hold and I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

Perhaps things are not as terrible here since we still have places like the internet cafe that has broadband.

I think what you should do is gather up as many people that love to have broadband together and convince the telco that there is demand for it? Just a suggestion

Ummm, without getting too crude… It sucks to be him.

However, his complaint is on par with a person who LOVES the theater, but lives in a small town where “community theater” consists of 5-year-olds dressed as trees singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

He has internet. He does have a local option, even if it is a bad one due to his profession. But his desired product is not available locally. Just as the theater lover has options (drive to the next town, or even start a small acting company). And just as the theater lover might have to move to get more of what he wants, this guy might have to move.

What would I do? I cannot say, because internet access is only one aspect of a home town. It would depend on whether I was heavily attached (and attracted) to the town and its people, whether housing was affordable elsewhere, whether a new job might be necessary, etc. As much as I love surfing and use the internet for work, internet access may not be the sole factor on where I live.

Yeah I have the same problem satilite is so fucking expencive and there is no other option I have dial up now and I still download tv shows by leaving it on over night when no one (hopefuly) calls

It has been 4 years since I ditched dial up for broadband. But, I had to convince my parents long and hard to get broadband. I guess the same applies in your case. You would have to call, write, and fax your local ISPs and politicians and anyone else responsible for bringing broadband to your area. It is a necessity for government, education, and commerce in your area. It is vital to your communities well being. Computers are no longer being fitted with dial up modems. Therefore, you need broadband. These are some of the points you can convince them with. Other than that, I really don’t know what to tell you beyond just stick with it which I will NOT tell you to do. This is 2009, we need broadband!

currently at a friends house……but for some unknown reason, verizon randomly decided to cut our DSL service. So in desperation, i had to get one of those free Dialup accounts. Believe it or not, i am ALREADY past my 10 hour limit……when i used it for 3 hours. Now i ask Verizon. WHY.

My step mother has Netzero and I got on it and it was terable. My point is netzero sucks

:O damn. Ppl like me still exist out there. :(
I thght I was the only one who was stuck on this aweful connection. Drivin 10mins to a faster connectoin is a pain in the a$$
Hang in there

If I still had to use dial-up I would set up a smoothwall and put the modem in there and have it cache the web pages for me if that way the last resort…dial-up is horribly slow and crappy and I feel bad for u still having to use it