DSL and cable vs dial up
Admittedly, different areas have variation, but its difficult to believe there could be anything even close to relatively comparable speeds. On Long Island, cable is approximately 50-100 times the stream of a dial up, and DSL is perhaps 10-20 times greater. To compare, let's talk about a relatively common program, Napster. To download a 4 minute song with dial up, it might take 25-35 minutes, if you have a decent phone connection, 40,000 +....with my cable the song will take anywhere from 25 seconds to 2 minutes, usually dependent on the limitations of the server, not my end. Pages that have a great deal of animation load up nearly instantly anyway, and playing video games is no longer a frustrating experience. You can keep AOL IM and I think almost all of the other features you like nowdays even with cable or DSL anyway...they're downloadable and available for free. AOL also has its own formats that don't support other companies common programs and pic setups also...overall they don't have anything "special" to offer other than removing your money from your pocket quicker, and disconnecting you more often than is believable, and throwing those annoying "updates" in every other day to tie up your computer...lol. I know a lot of people have a "comfort" level, and if that is the case, so be it...but the world of broadband improves every week...hope you take another swing at it! Q
