The 3Com Winmodem, one of the first companies to market a software modem. Software modems are a gamers worst nightmare, the reason?

Winmodems USE large amount of CPU power.

Winmodems do not work in any other OS other than Windows 9X (As of this writing, OEM models still do not work in Windows 2000)

Winmodems are meant to be cheap,Voice models will not have a microphone or speaker connector to plug in, they have a TAD connector sometimes on the inside for connection to your soundcard. Since they have less parts, they often are only about 1.5" high (fits in FLEX-ATX cases), and of course they do not work in real mode DOS, Linux, BeOS, or any other OS.

If you buy a winmodem, also make sure you know that whenever you connect or disconnect it will lock up your computer for a few seconds, so don't be playing games or burning CD's while you do that.

3Com however does make their winmodems use less CPU than competitors (particularly over HSP software modems) and have less of an impact on games, but still there is extra latency added by the use of the CPU to do the processing.

Something to make note of however, most people who do not know how to tweak the modem to get the highest connection rate out of it, may wind up with only getting connection rates as high as the 42K range. (Hint: enable and max out the serial port buffer, works on all software modems.) Where as my non-winmodem model always gets 53,333 or 52,000.





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