Monday, April 11, 2005

Oh, to live where there's DSL....

You know, I like living where I do. It's nice not to have to deal with big-city traffic every time I leave my house. I like being two minutes from the grocery store and five minutes from the post office. But why, oh why, so close to one of the biggest cities in the country, can't I get something other than freakin' DIAL-UP?!?!

The home computer is finally set up, and I love it! It's worlds better than the old one (which I plan to revamp and pass on to J as his first computer - I figure he can't hurt it, and he can just bang away on it to his heart's content). But why, oh why can't I live somewhere with some way to get online other than dial-up?!?! No cable internet, no DSL where I live - I've looked and looked, and all I find that covers my area is dial-up. The new computer is much, much faster than the old, yet I'm still hampered by the fact that our local access number only connects at 28.8 KBps. *SIGH* I got all excited, thinking I could download some music and make really fun mix CD's. Imagine my disappointment, after creating this great playlist, to get a message saying it could take several HOURS to download music via a dial-up connection. *SIGH* So I'll try it on a weekend, when I can keep running in there and checking to make sure the connection hasn't gone kablooey and when it doesn't matter if the computer is tied up for several hours at a time (I wasn't going to stay up until the wee small hours last night waiting on a CD to finish). I live outside one of the biggest cities in the U.S., and said city is getting closer to my town every day. And all I can get is crappy dial-up?!?! Oh, wait, I forgot - I could get satellite Internet, it comes out to where I live. It's only $59.95-69.95 a month, not too bad. Until you find out you'd have to shell out close to $1000 for hardware and installation. I think not.

6 comments:

Jay said...

There's always Satellite!

Lisa @ The Plain-Spoken Pen said...

I did check into that, Jay. But I don't have the $ to spend on installation and hardware. YOW, I had no idea it cost so much. So for now, I'll make do with dial-up, and hope someone at SBC looks at a map one day and realizes just where my little chunk of the world is located in relation to a major metropolitan area.

JamDaddy said...

Car, laptop, internet cafe!

If all else fails: desktop, dialup, tequila, long days on the front porch waiting and waiting and waiting.

You could always get two phone lines and use dual modems. I used to do that in the old days, I would think computers still supported that.

Lisa @ The Plain-Spoken Pen said...

There again, no internet cafes in my part of the world - I'd have to drive 20-30 miles to get to one! (And no laptop, either. LOL) I like the tequila idea, though - that might make the waiting a little less painful. :-) And at least it's not quite so miserable now with the new computer - a bit faster (although not by much) and I'm not getting kicked off every three minutes (which also speeds the process up a bit).

Mo said...

A friend of mine in your little town has wireless broadband. Contact Ryan at Air Canopy its $149 to get it installed and about $50/month. All the equipment is included.

Lisa @ The Plain-Spoken Pen said...

Ooh, Tommy, thanks MUCH for the tip! I'll have to get in touch with him. That would be wonderful!

L.