AT&T Broadband: Faster than the average premature ejaculation.
Written: Jul 10 '02 (Updated Jul 10 '02)
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Pros: It's always on, you don't get "booted", fast speed.
Cons: They made me miss almost 2 weeks of my prime at epinions.
The Bottom Line: If you're reading this on a 56K, I pity you.
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| pavona21's Full Review: AT&T@home |
For my rating sake, ignore the title
I'd like to take this moment to welcome everyone to my first "Home » Web Sites & Internet Services » ISPs" review in my short but sweet epinions history. While I won't claim to be Nostradamus or even Miss Cleo, I'm pretty sure that I know what you computer services seasoned veterens are thinking right now. "Video games guy is coming into my area, and is likely going to mess everything up". It'll be the most horrific thing on the internet this year. Children will cry, oil prices will skyrocket, leaders will be assassinated, and it will all be my fault! But, that's where the experienced, and even cynical, people of knowledge come in. If I do something wrong, do me a favor and tell me. Use your words, your back hand, or even the flogging stick if you think you have to. Just be gentle, I bruise easily...
The Setting: Dail ups aren't as cheap as they sound
A couple of years back, the internet had finally made its way into the Pavona household. For the first month, we went with the free of charge and free of good Juno service. Originally, there were no real complaints. Sure, it was slower than my personal mile time, and my butt started ache after all of the booting, but it was all in good free fun. Or was it? When the phone bill came that month, that all in good free fun had turned into horrible agony. $138 of charges based on our "over 400 dailings". It was safe to say that my parents weren't the most joyous bunch when that disheartening letter arrived at the house, and it was probabley a good thing that were no "lethal weapons" in the house at the time, but we would learn to get it over it. The day after that phone bill came in the mail, we called up cable provider AT&T to see what they could do for us.
Installation: 9/10-Yeah Toast!
Fortunatly for AT&T, they scheduled their hot date with my computer a mere 5 days after we called them up. Even better though, they actually came to that date on time, they must have known they were dealing with a powerful wanna be journalist! So, the computer guy showed up, and he bagan by checking out all of our wires. Since we were already subscribers to their cable service, everything checked out, and it was time for him to work his magic. I then gave him some "alone time" with my computer, hoping in the back of my head that computer triplets would show up 9 months later that would sell for big money. Sadly, I got no computer triplets, nor twins or a single, but I did get lightning fast internet pushed through my big cords in about 3 hours. We exchanged our thank you's, and have a nice a day's, he stood at my doorstep for a few minutes, I asked him to leave my house at once, and all was merry. I logged on to my new and highly esteemed internet service, and because of my new found expensive material object, I was happy.
Performance: 8/10-That's minus 2 points for keeping me off epinions!
Being as though I was once a prostitute to the "grass growing slow" realities of 56K, cable felt quick to me right from the get go. To this day, I'm still good for somewhere around 1.1 Megabits a second, and I'm still satisfied with that speed. For example, music downloads that once took me 20 minutes now only take 2 minutes. That same performance also spans across the great landscape that is the world wide web. My modem is speed is now so high quality, it can load Rock_on's profile in 1.2 years.(there's one NH rating!) In short, I'm happy with the speedy performance of my modem from downloads, email, and even large bulky profiles. Can ease of use and features stack up with speed?
The features and ease of use of this service are equally impressive. For starters, ATTBI gives the option to register up to 7 email accounts on their server. For me, it's Pavey21@attbi.com, for you it could be Epinionsgoon@attbi.com, it's fully customizable and fun to choose! Along the same lines, the email accounts are very easy to set up. I just opened up my preloaded edition of Outlook Express, set up my account through a POP3 server, and was ready to rumble. While we're conversing the ease of use though, we should also discuss the nice ATT browser. ATTBI.com will be set as your default homepage, and is one of the finer choices for homepage on the net. The page sports various helpful and useful web links, news alerts, local weather, and pretty much anything involving people with clothes on that you could imagine. It even looks pretty...
On the other hand, ATTBI gets a lot of bad press regarding its "downtime". While some people on the west coast, in other countries, and in god knows where have complained about the massive shutdowns, I have had very few problems with them. I live in mid-Michigan, and the only real annoyance I had regarding downtime was when ATT was switching their servers from excite based to ATTBI hosted. Of course, every time your cable goes out, this will too, so it won't be around when you need it most. That aside though, if you live anywhere near me, you can expect about 3-4 days of downtime per year, and that's not too shabby.
Customer Service: 5/10-Sounds average to me
Service wise, ATTBI is quite mediocre. While they do feature 24 hour support with real people to talk to, I've had mixed reactions with their helpfulness. I've only used the 1-800 number a few times, but when I have I've talked to a lot of people that can't fix my problem. In one single call, I managed to talk to 5 different people over the course of an hour and half. While intelligent people would tend to think that these "trained professionals" would know what they're doing, I think they just relay on having one person that can do one thing. Maybe I should only be able to talk, or eat, and not have to worry about being responsable, or studying, or even staying in the best lazy shape that I can. In a perfect world possibly...
Price: 8/10-Here's the clincher...
The price of ATTBI service is really a mixed bag. On one hand, the monthly fee of the ISP is a whopping $40. On the other hand though, you don't need a second phone line, it's always on, you get free email, and it's pretty top notch service. We payed over $130 in one month just for a phone bill for slow, crappy dail-up service, so I can appreciate the $40 a month. Along with that though, they usually have deals where installation is free, and you get 2 months of free service. Getting fully installed and ready high speed internet service for 2 months for nothing is pretty impressive. Along with that though, you also get 10MB's of free website hosting through their server. Oh yeah, did I mention that you get pretty darn good internet access? Overall, ATTBI clocks in at a more expensive price than dail-up, and a slightly cheaper price than DSL or T3. Personally, I have no problems saying that it's totally worth it, especially if you've experienced the same dial-up nightmare.
It's all over but the cryin'
Looking back on it all now, I am very happy with my service over the past year and a half, and very fortunate that I don't have to deal with dail-up anymore. If you're willing to pay the steep $40 a month to run the service, I would recommend you switching over as soon as possible. Fast speeds, minimal downtime, and great ease of use make this service worth every penny in my mind. But, I think that's enough computer an ISP talk for now. Until the next time, I remain a gamer that got lost in a section without graphics, controls, and gameplay.
Thanks for reading,
-Pav
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 40$/Month
Version Number or Year: *Nods head in confusion*
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Epinions.com ID:
pavona21
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Member: Eric Pavona
Location: Scenic Michigan
Reviews written: 105
Trusted by: 67 members
About Me:
Well Friends, it'll soon be GTA4 time.
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