...I switched over to Mozilla Firefox* (I decided that it'd be superior to my other alternative, which was to ram a wooden stake through the CPU); it seems fairly nifty, but all my reflexes are off. This tab thing, frex; really really useful and I keep forgetting how to use it. And let's not even start about getting it to download in the first place; I so need DSL.
IOW, not many posts tonight from me and I hope that all y'all were playing nice.
Open technical issues thread. Tell me what kind of broadband/DSL I need.
Moe
*And gold stars to everyone who suggested it.
Firefox is awesome. I made the switch about six months ago, and aside from needing to open IE once in a while for sites that require IE-specific code (which I don't mind, since it's pretty rare), I've never looked back.
I'm hardly a MS-hater--I used to work there after all, and worked on Webclient even--it's just that Firefox is a better browser in many ways. The MDI-based tabs alone, which I thought I'd hate, I found to dramatically increase my productivity, since I tend to juggle a bunch of different pages at once.
Open technical issues thread. Tell me what kind of broadband/DSL I need.
Purely from anecdotal personal experience, I recommend against DSL if you can get cable. There are pros and cons to both, but since I do a lot of downloading and browsing, both of which are primarily downstream-heavy, the tremendous downstream bandwidth of Comcast is a happy thing for me. Plus it's literally plug-and-play simple to network multiple computers with Comcast, whereas the DSL device that MSN ships doesn't work with more than one computer (unless you dedicate one computer as a gateway of sorts). When I was stuck on MSN/Qwest DSL in Phoenix, I was lucky to have an old Cisco 678 lying around that I could reprogram to get all our computers online; most people are not this lucky.
</longwindedrant>
Posted by: Catsy | June 17, 2004 at 02:29 AM
Mm. . Firefox. I'm glad we saved you from Opera. Next up, Thunderbird!
Lessee. . open technical issues. We had two apparently unrelated power outages in the last week and despite my box being all geared up with surge protectors, it blew out the video card and half my memory. I don't recomend it.
"Tell me what kind of broadband/DSL I need."
Cable seems to be getting faster cheaper, but I enjoy dealing with DSL providers more. The cable companies are TV people and it shows. Many cable companies also seem to have strict policies against any kind of hosting, and you can have a good time hosting a little wiki for your friends or a squeezebox stream or your own mailhost or whatever. If you do care about that, you should also find a service that will give you a static IP. It not only is easier to deal with than propagating a dynamic IP to a name provider, it's a sign that they a) care about you and b) know what they're doing.
Posted by: sidereal | June 17, 2004 at 03:40 AM
"The MDI-based tabs alone, which I thought I'd hate, I found to dramatically increase my productivity, since I tend to juggle a bunch of different pages at once."
I'll say this: deleting spambots is definitely less of a hassle with tabs. :)
Posted by: Moe Lane | June 17, 2004 at 06:16 AM
Yeah, tell me about it. I need to figure out how to implement spam blacklisting on my comments.
I tend to use the tabs a lot when I'm googling and/or crawling to research a post/comment.
Posted by: Catsy | June 17, 2004 at 09:02 AM
I've had a cable modem for almost two years now and have not had a single problem with it. I've not heard of anyone with DSL being so fortunate.
Posted by: JKC | June 17, 2004 at 09:55 AM
Yeah, that's another thing--I have never failed to have outages with any DSL line I've had in either Phoenix or Seattle, at least once every month or two. DSL QoS is extremely dependent on factors largely out of your or your ISP's control.
Posted by: Catsy | June 17, 2004 at 10:05 AM
Moe:
There are only two questions about highspeed Internet access:
I'll step over T3. If you're not Bill Gates or Donald Trump there's no need to to discuss it. There's no question that T1 is otherwise the best solution currently available. But it's expensive. No, it's EXPENSIVE. If both cable and DSL are available to you, the next question is a business question rather than a technical question. Who are the vendors? Only contract for DSL through your phone company. Any DSL sub-contractor must go through the phone company's copper and our beloved local carriers make a hobby of making life miserable for DSL sub-contractors.
If your cable provider is reliable, cable is not a bad solution. YMMV. My own experience and that of my clients here in the Chicago metropolitan area is that cable is more reliable than DSL.
Regardless of the solution you absolutely, positively need a firewall between you or your network and your highspeed Internet connection. Often they're supplied by your carrier. Sometimes the carrier only provides the modem.
Other technical issues include dynamic/static IP. But these can be dealt with.
Posted by: Dave Schuler | June 17, 2004 at 10:12 AM
The key to broadband is TERMS OF SERVICE. I have heard far too many tales of cable companies deciding you are using too much bandwidth and cutting the link, or that your one-time use of VPN makes you a "business-class" customer at triple the rates, to ever consider a cable provider.
Check out Speakeasy DSL and see if they can reach you. They have an attitude of "it's your connection, do what you like" and don't balk at running servers or home hetworking - hell, they have a program by which you can resell your DSL wirelessly in your area. And I will say this: their tech support people are absolutely the most talented I have ever encountered anywhere in the tech sector, and as one myself, I can tell you, it's rare.
Run, don't walk. You can thank me later =)
Posted by: jon | June 17, 2004 at 10:48 AM
jon:
Contracting with third-party DSL providers is very dependent on who your local carrier. SBC—my local carrier—has a history of stonewalling third-parties. It makes little difference how responsive or competent the third-party is. It's SBC's copper.
Posted by: Dave Schuler | June 17, 2004 at 10:57 AM
First off, congrats on finally dumping IE! Now, what are you using to read your mail?
I just had a long conversation/argument with my girlfriend this morning about tabbed browsing. She hates the idea, whereas I think she'll like it (since I hated it at first and have now come to love it).
Dave: my experience with SBC and third-party providers has been completely the opposite of yours. My girlfriend's had DSL for at least two years now through a mom 'n' pop operation, and has never had a single problem. (Well, except for the modem dying, and that was largely 'cause the cat liked to sleep on it.)
Posted by: Josh | June 17, 2004 at 02:03 PM
Firefox does rock. I've used it since .6 something, and .9 is even better, though I had to go back to the Qute theme right away. I replaced the IE links on both my parents and wife's workstation... and they never said a thing. I tweaked the layout so it looked enough like IE that they just accepted it. In fact, I'd forgotten the whole switcheroo until a few weeks ago. My uncle joked about url mistypes and the resulting porno and casino popups, and what a pain they were. My dad just kind of looked blank and said "I don't think I've ever had that happen."
Posted by: Neolith | June 17, 2004 at 02:32 PM
Josh:
my experience with SBC and third-party providers has been completely the opposite of yours. My girlfriend's had DSL for at least two years now through a mom 'n' pop operation, and has never had a single problem. (Well, except for the modem dying, and that was largely 'cause the cat liked to sleep on it.)
Interesting. I've had a half dozen clients who we attempted to get going using a 3rd party DSL service provider. In every case one of two things happened:
My dozen or so SBC DSL clients lose their DSL at least once a month. It's about once a quarter for my cable modem clients. As I said in my original comment: your mileage may vary.
Posted by: Dave Schuler | June 17, 2004 at 02:46 PM
Inspired by comments in this thread I downloaded and installed Firefox—less than ten minutes all told. Nice. Fast. Much better rendering that IE.
Posted by: Dave Schuler | June 17, 2004 at 07:30 PM
I have DSL at work and it's been a nightmare at times. We went through a period where Qwest was having to dispatch Verizon guys to check the status of the lines. Verizon decided the cool thing to do, since Qwest kindly told them where it was on the block for the building, was to cut our wires and tell Qwest everything is fine. I hate Verizon with a passion. In Philadelphia, it doesn't matter who you have DSL with, you're dealing with Verizon at the end of the day.
Comcast was good, but the TOS were weird. I got one of the "too much bandwidth" warning/threat letters. I toned it down and they were cool.
I moved and am now with RoadRunner. It's phenomenal. I've had no problems at all. The equipment is free, I got a free month, and they've never gotten on me about my disgustingly large bandwidth use.
Posted by: Nathan Hamm | June 18, 2004 at 09:48 AM
Moe,
Please suggest Mozilla 1.5 or 1.7 as opposed to Mozilla Firefox 0.9 for the less geeky of your readers. Beta code is scary territory for the less technical. Mozilla will provide a replacement for both Internet Explorer (browser) and Outlook Express (email) with good installation and conversion from the Microsoft products. This should provide more protection from viruses, worms and possibly trojans. Firefox only replaces the browser, and as beta code, may expect a higher level of expertise when dealing with problems or upgrading to a new release. Mozilla will eventually migrate to Firefox, so users won't lose out in the long run.
Posted by: Jay Sundahl | June 28, 2004 at 09:20 PM