If you read my 'stuff' regularly, you know that I've been agonizing over the choice of a replacement for AOL as my ISP and a 56baud modem as my connection.
(You know you read this stuff, as well as I know it, cause I have your comments. You either read with the hope that I'll say something of interest, or because you are amused by demonstrated Lack of Having A Life, or because you are a masochistic S.O.B. I'm voting for Option "C".)
A month ago, I thought I had a real chance of getting a broadcast WiFi connection. When I called the ISP office, they said "Hey, no problem, we already have a couple of customers on your street!"
This was good news, because I live on a cul-de-sac at the edge of their coverage area. I figure, if the folks across the street (there are only 8 houses on the street!) have a connection, I'm a sure shoo-in!
No joy. They came out and made their WiFi receiver tests, and said they couldn't do business with me. I'm in, like some kind of Oregon Vortex.
Well, I knew that. But I had hoped that the Internet Gods would have cut me a little slack this time. (Foolish boy!)
My remaining choices were between QWEST and COMCAST.
I really don't want COMCAST. I have a TV, but it's not hooked up to anything. I use it to view DVD's, VHS movie tapes, and sometimes to view the tapes I make with my VHS Analogue Video Cam (which I haven't used since I bought the Geek Digicam, on my birthday last February.) S
The alternative seems to be QWEST. Good upload/download speed, about a half-GIG of data storage, and since I'm already a customer they're willing to make me a deal by 'bundling' my services. This means they take the landline, the voice-mail, and the caller-ID charges and discount them ten percent before they add another thirty bucks a month for DSL.
The other alternative (COMCAST, and it looks like a slow runner since every deal they've pitched to me through their snail-mail spaaaaaaam) doesn't seem nearly as attractive. Sure, they'll give me 6 months of service at $30 a month, but the price then jumps up to $60 a month and I have to take Cable TV also. That adds about another $45 a month, for a grand total of $105 a month even though I don't WANT Television Access.
So I'm waffling back and forth, thinking that I don't use my landline except for the 56baud modem thingie, and tonite I tried to pay my QWEST bill online.
I tried six times, and every time I tried to pay my bill with my debit card, the online bill-pay kept coming back to the same screen. No error message, no reason why it wouldn't complete the transaction.
So I called the one-eight hundred phone number, and they can't figure it out either.
Nice lady Rachel told me she would be happy to take the information over the phone so I could complete the transaction.
No word on why the online bill-paying function wouldn't work, so (after assuring her that I had no complaints about her service at ALL) I asked to speak for her supervisor. Told her that I was angry and frustrated and I didn't want to take it out on her.
Her supervisor, Darren, was entirely polite but said he was 'disappointed' when I said I was tired of the QWEST Quik-Step every time I tried to pay my bill online and offered to take care of it personally.
I asked him to take notes, and then told him that I had experienced repeated problems with their online bill-paying, and I was tired of it. I mentioned that I only used the landline connection for Internet connection through AOL, and I just couldn't see any reason why I should have to jump through hoops every month just to pay my bill. This wasn't the first time I had to phone the home office to accomplish this supposed 'convenience', and I was tired of it. I wanted to pay my bill, and I did. But as soon as I could, I planned to discontinue my association with QWEST and use my cell phone for personal voice communications . . . which was provided by VERIZON, their closest competitor in this area.
After I had paid my QWEST bill I did a NetScape search on COMCAST and learned that they couldn't give me ISP service at my address.
Boy, did I feel the fool!
Then I went to one of the secondary links on the search page, and found a third-party provider who could hook me up with COMCAST, provide a six-month discount, and give me free installation of a free modem.
So here's the deal: Free installation (I have to stay home for a half-day so they can install the FREE modem, sometime around the end of the month) and I pay $30 a month for six months. Then the price rises to $49.95 a month for 4000 baud download, 385 baud upload. Plus they give me 50MB online storage . . . which means I have a place to park a few of those MPG files I've been threatening you with for a while.
Let me see: I pay $30 a month for six months, then I pay $50 a month.
And I don't need QWEST, so I save the nominal $60 a month I'm already paying.
Also, I don't need to pay $30 a month for AOL to be my primary ISP. Instead, I can pay $10 a month for minimal service.
Old monthly bills: $60/month for QWEST plus $30 a month for AOL = $90 a month.
New monthly bills: $50 a month for COMCAST plus $10 a month for AOL = $60 a month.
Current expense: 90 x 12 = $1080 per year.
Expected expense: $40 x 12 = $480 per year, a savings of $600.
Next year and successive years: $60 x 12 = $720 per year, a savings of $360.
Besides which, I can save an extra $120 a year if I use one of the SEVEN email addressed available on the COMCAST subscription and completely dump AOL. That's an attractive alternative all in itself.
Not only that, but I get online Internet access from 6 to 10 times faster, and I'm liking that.
Bottom line, I don't have to deal with QWEST any more when bill-paying time comes around, and I may even be able to get rid of the annoying AOL service discontinuities, which happen from time to time.
Right now, even before I get the COMCAST DSL service, I'm looking at a significant monthly savings. Plus I get faster access, plus I get online storage.
The downside?
I have a lot of history with AOL, and I'm taking in terms of archived emails.
I think I can live without that.
Anybody have any downside anecdotal reasons why COMCAST won't work for me?
6 comments:
ITEM! I never pass up a chance to slam AOL: Shit-can them ASAP!
ITEM! Hi-Speed, be it DSL or Cable, is the way to go; you'll never go back!
ITEM! Why can't they just send you the gear and you install it yourself? I use SBC's DSL service ($28.95/month,I've had it over a year and a half, and they haven't raised the rate yet), I installed it myself, and I've NEVER had any trouble.
ITEM! My brother in Tacoma is a COMCAST subscriber and he doesn't have any trouble that I know of.
GO FOR IT!!
Dude, you're gonna love it!
It's faster than either the T1 or the T3 here at my work by at least 50%.
Been with Comcast for over 2 1/2 years and, like I said previously, other than the modem itself taking a crap, not a problem.
Congratulations, Geek.
Grrr, that was me. AK
I'm a comcast subscriber also...
It's been excellent for me for over three years.
I do highly recommend getting a broadband router that provides a firewall and NAT. The one I've got is an older Asante, but you can get ones that provide a wireless access point and a print server, so you can have your printer easily network accessable. Do your research on the make and model, some have well known remote exploits, and there was one popular model that was hard coded to hit a specific university for NNTP requests, causing an inadvertant DDOS for that university...
I've been using comcast for about 5 years now with no problems at all.
Second the use of a router for firewall and NAT.
Initial setup requires installing their software. I did not want their software on my machine, so I installed a clean copy of windows on a separate partition and did the initial setup on that. Then I just removed that copy of the OS. After that the internet connection works fine without Comcast's software; it works fine with Linux also -- which at the time I set this up, they did not support.
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