A Cable modem internet service is at least 6 times faster than a dialup. That in itself blew me away after using a dialup service for 7 years and making the "big switches" from 14.4K to 28K to 56K.

When I was in a small town and knew I would soon be moving to a big town, I emailed an epinionator in said big town and asked her what the best and fastest internet service was. Her immediate reply: "Time Warner Roadrunner. It is a cable modem service linked to TV cable service. You get the normal gamut of TV channels but in addition you also get Cable Modem. They call it "Roadrunner".

I found out it was going to cost about $40.00 a month. That was pretty high. Almost $500.00 a year for the internet. Wow. I may earn my money, but that is a steep hill to climb. But then I thought: "If it really is that fast, you will be able to use the net as much as always but only faster and then you can get back to real life." And life is short, too; you might as well pay a little more sometimes to get something superlative if you can.

I weighed some other factors. In the small town, since I didn't want to tie up the telephone line at my home with the internet, I had installed a second phone line for about $20.00 a month. Then the internet service itself that went through said phone line was about $20.00 a month. So paying $40.00 a month for Roadrunner and getting 6 times the speed was definitely going to be an advantage.

In my house, I have 3 internet computers and 3 users. When I moved to the big city, I called Time Warner and asked if I could set up a LAN with the Roadrunner service. They said "yes," and "no," there would not be extra charges for the service to the other 2 computers. Sweet. It was all that for the flat $40.00 a month. So I had the LAN put in and hooked up all three computers. Roadrunner checked the configiurations, gave me free LAN cards and the cable modem itself, and we were up and roadrunning.

The results have been outstanding. Yes, you do get (comparatively) blazing speed, which is a big plus. Maybe not TI level speed, but enough to impress the socks off of you if your fastest experience has been dialup 56K (which in the town I lived in was actually about 40K because of the wheezy old local phone service.)

The installers were polite and efficient and the one maintenance glitsh I had was taken care of quickly and efficiently.

The only drawback is that when too many users are online it gets slow just like anything else. But slow here is about intermediate to fast in comparison to the old dialup ISP.

I realize that cable modem is not everywhere yet. It will be some day. If you can spring for the extra bucks, I highly recommend making the switch. You can get on, conduct your net business, and get off and back into Real Life in a hurry. You won't tie up the phone, and you won't see the net crash but once in a blue moon. Take the run, with Time Warner Cable Roadrunner!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 40/Mo.