So, I pay $40 bucks a month for a phone line that I *only* use for the older ReplayTV to dial out every night and for my DSL. My DSL is $60/month. So, right there is a $100 bucks I could reduce down to $42.95 if I went with a 2MB cable modem connection. It would only be $57.00 if I wanted to get basic cable also. The only reason I might pay for the cable (in addition to my DirecTV) would be to get back my beloved Newschannel 32 and Athens Gov’t Channel. I do love my locals.
If I did this, I would probably move all of my mail and websites back to a hosting account. That would probably be better for all of us who use me for hosting (all the blogs that haven’t been updated since like November because I am SLACK) and for mail. Because, you know, if the server crashed again right now, it would be WEEKS before I probably got it back up. It’s CHEAP to host off site these days. Hosting at home is so 2002.
So, question. Is cable a bad idea? 2MB is faster than my DSL. Am I really going to get that? I also think that if stopped all the athenstown/chippernet/spynotebook mail from coming across my lines, I would get an increase.
The issue of my pre-ethernet ReplayTV remains. Perhaps it is time to sell that on the eBay or to the Jocelyn who expressed interest in it at Agua Linda last night. It holds 100GB so it is pretty cool. Can it use my cell phone? I wonder if I can rig it somehow. Hmm.
my cable company (Comcast) has just raised their cap to 3Mb. They make it like they’re doing you a favor, but before comcast bought it from AT&T, there was no cap at all, and I got, on occasion, something along the lines of 4Mb/s transfers. I could get sustained downloads at the rate of 30 megabytes per minute…sometimes. I’ve never experienced really creeping slowness with it either.
Interestingly, the phone company here, Qwest, just announced that they’re offering DSL only service for folks that don’t need/want voice service….they also offer ‘standalone’ dsl service that doesn’t include an ISP for $15 (though that might only be the price if you have voice service). you can then choose your own (participating) isp rather than have to use their damn msn. also cool.
of course, that doesn’t help the replaytv situation. I’ve been thinking about a PVR lately, but no phone line (or dish) means no Tivo, so I guess replay might be the way to go…but last I checked they were really expensive compared to tivos and I’m not sure how badly I want one.
long comment.
Go check out replaytv.com. You can get refurbished units in the 150-250 range. I might get one of those and put it back in the pumpkin room and then sell my 100hr Replay that needs the phone line.