Flyingbronco05 From United States of America, joined May 2002, 3838 posts, RR: 3 Posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 8 hours ago) and read 667 times:
I am moving into an apartment with a friend of mine next year. We are planning on getting cable internet. Currently, the company has 2 different "kinds" of cable internet, being 384kb and 2mb.
For 2 people, what would be the best value. What is the main difference?
JeffM From United States of America, joined May 2005, 3266 posts, RR: 53 Reply 1, posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 8 hours ago) and read 664 times:
don't bother with 384k, it will just piss you off. Go for the 2mb, unless they have something faster. If you are going to share the pipe, make it as large as possible.
Flyingbronco05 From United States of America, joined May 2002, 3838 posts, RR: 3 Reply 2, posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 8 hours ago) and read 660 times:
F9Widebody From United States of America, joined Sep 2003, 1604 posts, RR: 11 Reply 3, posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 8 hours ago) and read 655 times:
If you are doing anything other than browsing take the 2 mb. It is well worth it when downloading things or playing any games. If you are networking, it would also steer clear of the 384. That speed is worse than the basic speed on many DSL lines.
Hawaiian717 From United States of America, joined May 1999, 3092 posts, RR: 8 Reply 4, posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 7 hours ago) and read 643 times:
384Kb is ridiculously slow for "high speed" Internet. Especially since there is two of you splitting the cost, get the 2Mb. What they're advertising is the speed of your connection, namely, 384 kilobits per second and 2 megabits (2048 kilobits) per second. Note these are kilobits, not kilobytes which is what your web browser usually reports. Technically to convert, divide kilobits/megabits by 8 to get kilobytes/megabytes. I've found as a decent rule of thumb, you can estimate what you'll really get if you divide by 10, which is also easier to do in your head.
I'd look at getting ADSL instead of cable. There have been quite a few problems recently with cable providers being user-unfriendly. Like putting a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can use per month, not telling you what it is, and then cutting you off (or changing your connection to a much slower one) when you exceed it.
Oh, and this is happening next year, so expect things to be different. The cable company will probably be charging more, while DSL will be cheaper. Cable Internet prices haven't really gone anywhere in the past few years, while DSL has been getting cheaper (they used to cost about the same).
CPDC10-30 From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2000, 4759 posts, RR: 26 Reply 5, posted (9 years 3 months 2 days 7 hours ago) and read 642 times:
There have been quite a few problems recently with cable providers being user-unfriendly. Like putting a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can use per month, not telling you what it is, and then cutting you off (or changing your connection to a much slower one) when you exceed it.
Rogers Cable did exactly this to me, threatening to suspend my account because of "excessive usage" on what they advertise as UNLIMITED ACCESS. No need, I just cancelled both the internet and cable TV accounts immediatley and went with ADSL internet and satellite TV. The cable companies are so arrogant it is sickening.
Hawaiian717 From United States of America, joined May 1999, 3092 posts, RR: 8 Reply 7, posted (9 years 3 months 1 day 6 hours ago) and read 594 times:
The problem is not that people don't read the fine print. Even if they did, it wouldn't tell them "if you download more than 30GB of data in any 30 day period we will turn off your access". If it did it wouldn't be so bad. The problem is they don't tell you the threshold. If you ask, they won't tell you.
I have heard some complaints about DSL providers as well, but those are more customer service or technical issues as opposed to blatant ripping off of the customers.
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