[Milsurplus] Google groups

[Mark J. Blair]

On Dec 13, 2010, at 1:13 PM, Mike Hanz wrote:
> The first thing you should 
> explore is the status of wireless cell phone internet service.

That's what I'm using. While it's better than dial-up, it's still slow enough (particularly at home, where I'm in a fringe area) that routinely getting emails with >1MB attachments would be quite painful.


> The second option (which I chose three years ago but 
> may abandon as 3G cell phone coverage continues to expand), is satellite 
> service.  It occasionally has its problems in web browsing because of 
> the delay, but the e-mail is fast and efficient, and the lowest speed 
> plans are not that expensive.

I considered that. Since I play World of Warcraft (an online game), the latency would be a killer. Also, all of the reviews that I've read indicate that the satellite services were great when they were first introduced, but quickly became awful as the providers grossly oversold their available bandwidth.

I used to have wireless internet service from a local company that uses WiFi-based hardware with directional antennas. It was good at first... then they oversold their bandwidth, farmed out their customer service to another company with really awful support, fell behind on maintenance, and the service became too poor to justify paying for.

Believe me, I'm always looking for new options, and I'd happily pay quite a lot every month for better connectivity at home. Still, unless I win the mega-lotto and can then afford to string several miles of fiber to my lot, my current cellular-based internet service appears to be the best option available to me at this time.


-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
Web page: http://www.nf6x.net/
GnuPG public key available from my web page.