My wife just called me (I'm at work, she's home.) Apparently our cable company is doing a "Call today to get a cable modem installed, and we'll be there today and your installation is free" special offer. So, she calls and says "Should I call them?"

All you guys know how long I've been saying "We should be getting broadband any time now..." That's about how long I've been trying to get her to let me get broadband. It's been very back-and-forth. Now, out of the blue, she's all for it. Strange...

My wife's always been cool, but she has been so much cooler the last few weeks...

Not to throw any cold water on this or anything. =)

But, Murph, does your wife know it will be about $40/month for the subscription? My wife was all for it too, until she compared that with the free dial-up service I get through work. :) If she doesn't know, proceed at your own risk. ;)

Oh, yeah. She knows. We've been talking about this for months.

She's finally craving e-bay badly enough...:-)

Yeah, we get free i-net from my wife's company, too, so that was pretty hard to compete against. But, she's finally decided that it's worth the extra money for faster connections.

"Yeah, we get free i-net from my wife's company, too, so that was pretty hard to compete against. But, she's finally decided that it's worth the extra money for faster connections."

Hmmm, if Popcap didn't make that damned downloadable version of Bejeweled and you had to play it online, maybe my wife would go for it too.

Get her hooked on e-bay. It works like a charm!

My parents have had DSL for a while now, and just got back from a stay at my brother's house where there is no broadband (ironically, he works for Cisco's optical networking section, where they just finished a new OC-192 switch). I asked Mom if they were able to check their email remotely and she said, "Yes, but they only have dial-up and it is so slow! It was so horrible that I didn't even like to go in the computer room. I don't know how they live like that."

So, I think it is fair to say that paying for a cable modem connection can be more desirable than using free dial-up.

Once you go broadband you can never go back. You'll never again look at a modem without wincing from sympathetic pain.

Fair warning-- it spoils you.

Well, there's a reason that I don't get online at home much, after having a T1 at work...

I'm already spoiled.

A sure way to get your wife to sign off on broadband is to encourage her to create her own website. Even if it only contains family photos and such, she will be so PO'd after a couple of months of uploading content to her site using a 56K dialup that she will beg for broadband.

My wife's site is at:

www.rhondarenee8.com

-DavidCPA

That's a spectacular idea!

My wife has been wanting to do that, anyway. I'll encourage her to do that now.

My wife wants broadband. I want broadband. We can't get broadband. Ick.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/modem.shtml

Well...This is my first post via my new cable modem...

Pretty sweet!
Finally got all that networking crap straightened out...

Having one PC on a cable modem is fine...

Having more than one -- big headache!

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2783592,00.html

My wife was hating life when the cable modem network crashed for 24 hours. She never wanted DSL or Cable until we got it. Now she can't live without it.

BTW, anyone who gets cable modem or DSL and want to share it in a network. Save yourself some time and headaches and grab an SMC Barricade DSL/Cable router/hub. I had mine setup in about 5 minutes to talk to the cable modem. There are definitely others like 3com, Linksys, etc. but the Barricade does everything I need it to and works flawlessly.

When we finally get broadband we're gonna have a problem hooking our computers up I'm afraid, because we both have systems that need simultaneous access from unique IPs, and we're on different floors of the house. I suppose the router/hub setups will handle the actual sharing and IPs, but actually networking the two boxes sounds daunting. I don't think running cabling is going to work due to the concrete slab floor above the basement where my office is, and I don't know much about wireless networking.

Moot right now, as we have only dialups.

Wireless networking is (supposedly) pretty easy to set-up, but pricey.

You can also get a card that allows you to use any phone jack as a network jack. Not sure how it works, but my father-in-law has it at his house, and he has his laptop in the living room (downstairs) networked with his main PC upstairs, over the phone lines. I don't think they're too pricey, and require virtually no st-up, if I'm not mistaken. You just plug it in and it's supposed to work.

Robert, you might want to look into this and this when you get broadband. Pretty snappy.

If it were me, I would find a way to snake an ethernet cable down to the basement. If the phone line can make it down there, no reason you can't get 100 base T to go along the same route. I know about all the wireless solutions, but none of them are as fast or reliable.

I've got DSL in my apartment. Whenever we start to look into buying a house, I'm gonna ask the realtors how close each house is to its central office... :)

I'm *that* spoiled.

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Quote:

If it were me, I would find a way to snake an ethernet cable down to the basement. If the phone line can make it down there, no reason you can't get 100 base T to go along the same route.

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Thanks, guys! Do those phone link systems tie up the phone line? We want to avoid that. Running cable was my first choice, but I never thought of trying to snake it back along the same way the phone line goes...that might work.

As I said, though, until we get broadband, it's moot.

Nope -- doesn't interfere with the phone line even one little bit.

I agree with Tim, though, if it's at all feasible -- the ethernet cable will promote faster data transfer, and since that's the whole purpose of broadband, if it's possible, it's probably worth it.

But, if you wanted to save yourself the headache and just get a phone link card, I certainly wouldn't blame you.

Either way, should broadband become available, you'll be prepared.