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Hi fellow gamesters
It is now a year since I splashed out some of my hard-earned on a Cable Modem. I have recently read so much media hype and hatred around Cable Modems and ASDL that I thought you might be interested in the experiences of 'the man on the street' (or in this case, the man in his bedroom somewhere in Surrey).
Just over a year ago a colleague mentioned to me that we were in the catchment area for NTL's new Cable Modem service. He waxed lyrical on how much he enjoyed his, especially since he was prone to spending most of his evenings in some RPG that world I forget (Everquest I think). I had tried once or twice to game online using my 56k modem through AOL but this was laughable at best and simply unplayable at worst. My colleague told me that it was about £40 per month flat rate for unlimeted use (this has since come down to about £30 per month) but there was an initial outlay of about £250 for the cable modem and a network card.
I decided that this was probably worth the cash and so contacted NTL who organised the purchase of the equipment through a 3rd party and arranged for an engineer to come ruond and install the necessary cable connection. I should point out that I didnt actually have NTL cable TV at the time, so I had to take their minimum package first (about £11 per month then) before I could get the cable modem service.
Once the equipment was installed it took a good few hours of telephone assistance to get set up, but I got it working the same day so can't complain.
So what is it like? - It's wonderful. Constantly online, no dialling up, and fantastic download speeds (although this is still dependent on the speed of the site you are downloading from). To give you an idea, I regularly download files of 20, 50, and even 70 megabytes because it is so quick (great for the miriad of game patches you need these days). I have seen download speeds of 150k per second from some sites - that means you get a megabyte in about 10 seconds. Avergae speeds though from commercial sites are about 60-80k per second. This is still much faster than the drip drop of 5k or so that I managed out of my 56k modem. For those that are interested, the cable modem is capable of 512k download, but I have yet to come across a site that could serve up the data to me that quickly.
The majority of the past year has been perfect. Continual service, very few problems. Many MANY hours spent playing TFC, Counterstrike, Quake 3 etc. etc. and in general being "Mr. Online".
I have recently had more service breaks though....to the point of frustration. And when I phoned the support line on one occasion I waited for 40 minutes before hanging up. The support is pretty abysmal on the whole and this is one area that leaves a bad taste in the mouth in an otherwise excellent product.
Conclusions? - well, you draw your own - that was why I decided to write this and have tried to be unbiased. The breaks in service and support irritations are not enough to make me stop the service or move to ASDL (when it becomes truly available that is) so I guess I must be happy. If you want to get into online gaming, or even just surfing the net at a decent speed then I can rcommend it.
Hope this opst has been of some use to someone!
It is now a year since I splashed out some of my hard-earned on a Cable Modem. I have recently read so much media hype and hatred around Cable Modems and ASDL that I thought you might be interested in the experiences of 'the man on the street' (or in this case, the man in his bedroom somewhere in Surrey).
Just over a year ago a colleague mentioned to me that we were in the catchment area for NTL's new Cable Modem service. He waxed lyrical on how much he enjoyed his, especially since he was prone to spending most of his evenings in some RPG that world I forget (Everquest I think). I had tried once or twice to game online using my 56k modem through AOL but this was laughable at best and simply unplayable at worst. My colleague told me that it was about £40 per month flat rate for unlimeted use (this has since come down to about £30 per month) but there was an initial outlay of about £250 for the cable modem and a network card.
I decided that this was probably worth the cash and so contacted NTL who organised the purchase of the equipment through a 3rd party and arranged for an engineer to come ruond and install the necessary cable connection. I should point out that I didnt actually have NTL cable TV at the time, so I had to take their minimum package first (about £11 per month then) before I could get the cable modem service.
Once the equipment was installed it took a good few hours of telephone assistance to get set up, but I got it working the same day so can't complain.
So what is it like? - It's wonderful. Constantly online, no dialling up, and fantastic download speeds (although this is still dependent on the speed of the site you are downloading from). To give you an idea, I regularly download files of 20, 50, and even 70 megabytes because it is so quick (great for the miriad of game patches you need these days). I have seen download speeds of 150k per second from some sites - that means you get a megabyte in about 10 seconds. Avergae speeds though from commercial sites are about 60-80k per second. This is still much faster than the drip drop of 5k or so that I managed out of my 56k modem. For those that are interested, the cable modem is capable of 512k download, but I have yet to come across a site that could serve up the data to me that quickly.
The majority of the past year has been perfect. Continual service, very few problems. Many MANY hours spent playing TFC, Counterstrike, Quake 3 etc. etc. and in general being "Mr. Online".
I have recently had more service breaks though....to the point of frustration. And when I phoned the support line on one occasion I waited for 40 minutes before hanging up. The support is pretty abysmal on the whole and this is one area that leaves a bad taste in the mouth in an otherwise excellent product.
Conclusions? - well, you draw your own - that was why I decided to write this and have tried to be unbiased. The breaks in service and support irritations are not enough to make me stop the service or move to ASDL (when it becomes truly available that is) so I guess I must be happy. If you want to get into online gaming, or even just surfing the net at a decent speed then I can rcommend it.
Hope this opst has been of some use to someone!
I have only had Telewest high speed cable for about a month and it is EXCELLENT, my advice is if you can get NTL/Telwest cable in your area get High Speed Cable NOW it only costs £33 or as daft as it sounds £34.60 for high speed cable, Line Rental and interactive TV. If you are unfortunate and do not live in an cable are my apologies and I hope you make BT even richer. BT ADSL is £39.99 per month + mandatory phone line at £9.60 (£47.59 total)not forgetting the £150 installation fee (cable charge between £25 if a friend recommends you £50 standard or £75 inc network card).
Before anyone's says this post is a Cable advert, it's not one thing cable or at least Telwest can not offer is good customer service, If you thought BT was bad try Telewest.
Before anyone's says this post is a Cable advert, it's not one thing cable or at least Telwest can not offer is good customer service, If you thought BT was bad try Telewest.
Just a quick note. The 512k speed is kila bits not bytes. this means that you max download speed is 128k bytes (the 150 you mentioned was probably windows mis calculating
).
).
Hi fellow gamesters
It is now a year since I splashed out some of my hard-earned on a Cable Modem. I have recently read so much media hype and hatred around Cable Modems and ASDL that I thought you might be interested in the experiences of 'the man on the street' (or in this case, the man in his bedroom somewhere in Surrey).
Just over a year ago a colleague mentioned to me that we were in the catchment area for NTL's new Cable Modem service. He waxed lyrical on how much he enjoyed his, especially since he was prone to spending most of his evenings in some RPG that world I forget (Everquest I think). I had tried once or twice to game online using my 56k modem through AOL but this was laughable at best and simply unplayable at worst. My colleague told me that it was about £40 per month flat rate for unlimeted use (this has since come down to about £30 per month) but there was an initial outlay of about £250 for the cable modem and a network card.
I decided that this was probably worth the cash and so contacted NTL who organised the purchase of the equipment through a 3rd party and arranged for an engineer to come ruond and install the necessary cable connection. I should point out that I didnt actually have NTL cable TV at the time, so I had to take their minimum package first (about £11 per month then) before I could get the cable modem service.
Once the equipment was installed it took a good few hours of telephone assistance to get set up, but I got it working the same day so can't complain.
So what is it like? - It's wonderful. Constantly online, no dialling up, and fantastic download speeds (although this is still dependent on the speed of the site you are downloading from). To give you an idea, I regularly download files of 20, 50, and even 70 megabytes because it is so quick (great for the miriad of game patches you need these days). I have seen download speeds of 150k per second from some sites - that means you get a megabyte in about 10 seconds. Avergae speeds though from commercial sites are about 60-80k per second. This is still much faster than the drip drop of 5k or so that I managed out of my 56k modem. For those that are interested, the cable modem is capable of 512k download, but I have yet to come across a site that could serve up the data to me that quickly.
The majority of the past year has been perfect. Continual service, very few problems. Many MANY hours spent playing TFC, Counterstrike, Quake 3 etc. etc. and in general being "Mr. Online".
I have recently had more service breaks though....to the point of frustration. And when I phoned the support line on one occasion I waited for 40 minutes before hanging up. The support is pretty abysmal on the whole and this is one area that leaves a bad taste in the mouth in an otherwise excellent product.
Conclusions? - well, you draw your own - that was why I decided to write this and have tried to be unbiased. The breaks in service and support irritations are not enough to make me stop the service or move to ASDL (when it becomes truly available that is) so I guess I must be happy. If you want to get into online gaming, or even just surfing the net at a decent speed then I can rcommend it.
Hope this opst has been of some use to someone!
It is now a year since I splashed out some of my hard-earned on a Cable Modem. I have recently read so much media hype and hatred around Cable Modems and ASDL that I thought you might be interested in the experiences of 'the man on the street' (or in this case, the man in his bedroom somewhere in Surrey).
Just over a year ago a colleague mentioned to me that we were in the catchment area for NTL's new Cable Modem service. He waxed lyrical on how much he enjoyed his, especially since he was prone to spending most of his evenings in some RPG that world I forget (Everquest I think). I had tried once or twice to game online using my 56k modem through AOL but this was laughable at best and simply unplayable at worst. My colleague told me that it was about £40 per month flat rate for unlimeted use (this has since come down to about £30 per month) but there was an initial outlay of about £250 for the cable modem and a network card.
I decided that this was probably worth the cash and so contacted NTL who organised the purchase of the equipment through a 3rd party and arranged for an engineer to come ruond and install the necessary cable connection. I should point out that I didnt actually have NTL cable TV at the time, so I had to take their minimum package first (about £11 per month then) before I could get the cable modem service.
Once the equipment was installed it took a good few hours of telephone assistance to get set up, but I got it working the same day so can't complain.
So what is it like? - It's wonderful. Constantly online, no dialling up, and fantastic download speeds (although this is still dependent on the speed of the site you are downloading from). To give you an idea, I regularly download files of 20, 50, and even 70 megabytes because it is so quick (great for the miriad of game patches you need these days). I have seen download speeds of 150k per second from some sites - that means you get a megabyte in about 10 seconds. Avergae speeds though from commercial sites are about 60-80k per second. This is still much faster than the drip drop of 5k or so that I managed out of my 56k modem. For those that are interested, the cable modem is capable of 512k download, but I have yet to come across a site that could serve up the data to me that quickly.
The majority of the past year has been perfect. Continual service, very few problems. Many MANY hours spent playing TFC, Counterstrike, Quake 3 etc. etc. and in general being "Mr. Online".
I have recently had more service breaks though....to the point of frustration. And when I phoned the support line on one occasion I waited for 40 minutes before hanging up. The support is pretty abysmal on the whole and this is one area that leaves a bad taste in the mouth in an otherwise excellent product.
Conclusions? - well, you draw your own - that was why I decided to write this and have tried to be unbiased. The breaks in service and support irritations are not enough to make me stop the service or move to ASDL (when it becomes truly available that is) so I guess I must be happy. If you want to get into online gaming, or even just surfing the net at a decent speed then I can rcommend it.
Hope this opst has been of some use to someone!