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

By: michael

michael — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:45:09 +0000

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

By: thecrazyjogger

thecrazyjogger — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:33:25 +0000

: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

By: Zach Seale

Zach Seale — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:58:16 +0000

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

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:04:43 +0000

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.

By: kpslover007

kpslover007 — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:31:36 +0000

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!

By: zim

zim — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:30:35 +0000

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

By: Tom Woolf

Tom Woolf — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:23:30 +0000

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.

By: Zen

Zen — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:38:46 +0000

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

By: Bitrunner

Bitrunner — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:49:43 +0000

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 !

By: Antonio

Antonio — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:49:39 +0000

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…

By: Paul Bolduc

Paul Bolduc — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:39:15 +0000

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.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:44:26 +0000

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/

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:04:26 +0000

Sorry I meant 200kbs down

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:02:44 +0000

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

By: bizzyb0t

bizzyb0t — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:39:43 +0000

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.