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So good, and so frustratingJan 24 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Cable set-up is easy, because someone else does it. A tech comes to your house, installs an Ethernet card if your computer doesn't have one, and installs the software needed to run the cable service. After he finishes fiddling with wires, he leaves you with some brochures and that's it: You're on cable. Installation costs about $100, but there are frequent specials that cut the price considerably. The monthly service fee - usually between $40 and $50 a month - is for a connection to one computer. My cable company, Comcast@home, will not allow its techs to add other computers to the cable, but lets users do so. The fee for another computer networked into the system is about $6 a month, but you're on your own not only on installation, but also on figuring out network problems. Comcast will not support the networks. So, if you want more than one computer connected by cable and you don't want the hassle of networking, you need to pay the full price for another cable connection. If you have America Online and want to keep it in addition to the cable, you can pay about $10 a month to AOL and can connect to it easily through the cable connection. Or, you can continue paying AOL the full amount (about $22 a month) and use it as an emergency back-up, bypassing the cable and connecting to AOL through a phone jack when the cable is down. I mention this because cable is not terribly reliable, at least Comcast is not. And when it does go down, it can take the better part of a week, and many, many hours with tech support, to get it back up again. If you rely on an Internet connection, you might want to think seriously about having a second way to sign on. That said, a cable connection is so very good that, despite the considerable frustration of lengthy outages and terrible tech support, you will never want to go back to a dial-up modem. When the system is working, you are always on. No phone line is tied up, and there is never a wait to sign on. Downloading huge files is fast; downloading small and medium-sized files is nearly instantaneous. Pages do pop up quickly. Not instantly in most cases, but quickly. Since cable systems basically network an entire neighborhood, your cable may slow down if lots of your neighbors sign on. But still, it will be faster than a 56k modem connection by a considerable margin. While cable may seem expensive, it can cost less -- maybe much less -- than a phone modem hook-up if you need to go out of your immediate area to find a phone number through which to sign on. In my last month without cable, I spent more than $70 in phone charges to connect to the Internet because the connection number that would have been a local call for me was always busy. Cable would be close to perfect if only tech support were not so very bad, at least through Comcast. On-hold waiting time can easily run 30 minutes. After that wait, you are connected to what they call a "tier 1 tech." Lovely, articulate, obviously well-educated people, these techs are not techies. It is obvious that they are reading from a script and have no intuitive understanding of how a computer works. One tech told me Comcast is now hiring 30 new techs a week. And the techs I have spoken with, in addition to being new to the job, did not come from computer backgrounds. This means that you are going to spend A LOT of time on the phone with a tech, and then very likely will be told to wait for a call from a tier 2 tech, which may never come, forcing you to call back and start all over, and over, and over. When I say that it has taken me a full week, on more than one occasion, to get my cable working again, I am not exaggerating. And the most frustrating part of the experience is that in the end the problem is always something minor that could have been remedied quickly by a knowledgeable tech. But I don't see a big incentive for cable Internet companies to provide better support. In most cases, one company is the only game in town. It's either get a connection from them or do without. If you have the choice go for it, and get a good book to read while you're on hold with tech support.  |
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