Dial-up holdouts ask: Why go to broadband?

HUH!?!??!? Those ARE the high end places (to me! :) Unfortunately, expensive also sometimes doesn't mean squat, I remember one place in Talkeetna (alaska), that was $250 a night, but had absolutely no wireless nor wired! That's when I started thinking location location location...... :)

Three words:

Microsoft Seurity Updates

many of them are far too large to download on a dialup line. Why spend over an hour just to download one seurituy update, when can use broadband and download it in seconds. I, of course, am one of those who believes that saving time is more important than saving money.

You should change your priorities and put saving time ahead of saving money.

Every Holiday Inn (regular, Express or Staybridge Suites)I've stayed over the last two years has either had usable wireless in the room or ethernet connection in the room. Same with (fewer) Marriotts

HI is about as cheap as I am willing to go (g).

That is one of the reasons I like Earthlink. No matter where I am I can get to the Web-based e-mail and look without paying anything else to ELN, anyway.

Three words: Switch to Apple. (BEG)

That is a rather weird thing to say. They are his priorities and he is welcome to them.

"Peter Pan" hath wroth:

Actually, I haven't heard it in quite that form. What I usually hear is something like, "broadband costs about 3 times as much as dialup. Will I get more than 3 times the fun/features/functionality on broadband as dialup?" I guess there are those that don't mind staring at the download indicator for 3 times as long.

A demonstration of fast browsing, online music, video, gaming, downloading, updates, and such are usually insufficient. What always gets their attention is Skype, GizmoProject, X-Lite or other VoIP phone. These work over dialup, but just barely. You also can't receive calls on dialup if you're not connected full time. A free or very cheap phone call to some long lost relative in the old country usually clinches the sale.

That's not an issue for my business and commercial customers. It might be for a few of my customers that travel, but most of these also have spouses and families at home that will use the connection.

For those that do travel, I usually advise them that about 1600 to

2000 laptops per day are stolen and that they would be better off leaving theirs at home. My guess(tm) is about 1 in 4 that have ignored this advice, have had their laptops stolen while on a trip or vacation. The issue is not the replacement cost of the laptop. It's the vulnerability to various breach of disclosure laws if there is personal, customer, or vendor information on the laptop. Removable drives and/or encrypted filesystems have saved a few customers from embarrassing and expensive complications:

I think my next product will be a laptop destruct device, which ignites or explodes inside the laptop if someone attempts to use it without the proper incantations. Your money back if your laptop or data survives.

"Charles Newman" hath wroth:

Baloney. Use Google to search for "Athelon 64 modem" and notice the rather large number of such systems being sold with modems. It would be a fair assumption that these modems are functional.

Per Charles Newman:

Bear in mind that it's a big world and not everybody has very much money.

$30/month may be small change for some, but it's a lot of money for others.

There are plenty of free web-based email setups out there. gmail would also be an easy choice.

Even better, TWO words (one less!) "FREE WIFI" :)

X-No-Archive: Yes

But if it saves time, its worth the extra money. That is why when I was growing up in Marin County, I was willing to spend an extra 50 cents each way to take an express bus, for longer trips in the county, about 40 minutes vs 2 1/2 hours (and more buses without using the express). From a young age, I considered saving time to be more important, whether you can afford it or not.

If you are going to use dialup, at least have a second phone line and use two modems and two phones to double the connection speed to about 100K.

Chew on this, when copper wiring is eventually replaced, dialup will cease to work, and they people will have to choose a broadband offering.

Reminds me of touchtone phones. I refused to pay for the touchtone premium and used either a dial phone or a touchtone phone with a pulse dialer that emulated the dial phone. Wasn't long before I could use touchtone for free when they threw out the old equipment.

In comp.dcom.xdsl Jeff Liebermann wrote in part:

If they download that much. My mom is still on dialup and during a recent visit I found it perfectly adequate for her low email volume and even my ssh sessions. It _is_ slow for browsing today's heavyweight webpages. But she doesn't do that more than a few times per week!

She doesn't care about VoIP since she has excellent and inexpensive voice service. My godmother is even worse: she has neither computer nor any email account. I'm not sure she really needs them. Her interests are her grandkids and I doubt the greater quantity of traffic via email/IM would be any compensation of the loss of emotional contact via voice and in-person. She doesn't have data to transmit, and I don't think email would be "a way in". Kids aren't very patient and [grand]parents a [necessary] intrusion.

-- Robert

In comp.dcom.xdsl Charles Newman wrote in part:

One word: overnight!

I don't use MS products personally, so I'm not sure but I presume they can run unattended. When I had dialup 5+ years ago, I would occasionally download ISOs overnight.

-- Robert

In comp.dcom.xdsl Charles Newman wrote in part:

??? even most new (US & world) construction has copper to the house. Very little FTC. POTS and dialup will be around for a _very_ long time (50+ years). The justification to replace it just isn't there [yet].

-- Robert

There was some rather nasty feedback on Verison actually removing copper from the house if you used their Fiber to the Home service so you couldn't change providers. Don't see any reason to think that will not become an up and coming idea amongst others.

From the house, or from the outside plant. I cannot see verizon going into people's homes to remove copper from private homes.

From the street to the door. Of course that is basically the same thing as depriving one of copper, even if it remains in the house itself.