I caved.
-
I had cable-based broadband for about 4 years. Rogers is the local media-monopoly provider, and as it turns out, they all suck. The entire company. Tech support was manned by people incapable of rational thought, and who had no real purpose other than to take calls from computer-newbies and give them the illusion that someone in the entire company had a clue. I learned that during our monthly outages there is no point to calling and asking if they had any idea when the system would work again, because the people at tech-support would never have any notion that anything was wrong in the first place. You just had to wait. An hour. A day. Whatever. Then they increased their rates. Then they decided to charge for more than average bandwidth. And this pushed me over the edge. If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid (which I wouldn't argue). It only costs them extra if they feel they need to add more hardware to handle the entire city downloading MP3s at 7:30 in the evening. Which they probably didn't, since the system was frequently pathetically slow in the evenings. Nope, they just decided they could grub more money from unsuspecting parents because their kids were downloading movies and music. So I dropped them. Some of you might recall (maybe?) I disappeared for a bit whilst dealing with some anti-technology depression. I bought a modem and went back to dial-up in order to save some cash and my sanity. My name is Jamie and I've been broadband-free for 5 months. And now it's just too damn much. You just can't use the internet at 42.8kbps. Not without losing your mind. This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M Powerpoint presentation full of photos from her party to 50 of her closest friends. She sent a preview email warning us first - like that helped. Then, apparently a bunch of people complained about the giant email they got. So she sent around another email saying, "Ooops, sorry. I've split the 1 big file into 5 smaller files." Again, a warning of impending but unavoidable doom. Then she sent another 11M of data, neatly split into smaller files. It would have taken me the better part of the day just to download them. And she's not the only one. My mother-in-law has had it explained to her that gigantic email attachments and mindless forwards piss me off. And now that I type this out, it makes perfect sense... it's my mother-in-law of course. So basically, I need broadband just to keep up. St
-
I had cable-based broadband for about 4 years. Rogers is the local media-monopoly provider, and as it turns out, they all suck. The entire company. Tech support was manned by people incapable of rational thought, and who had no real purpose other than to take calls from computer-newbies and give them the illusion that someone in the entire company had a clue. I learned that during our monthly outages there is no point to calling and asking if they had any idea when the system would work again, because the people at tech-support would never have any notion that anything was wrong in the first place. You just had to wait. An hour. A day. Whatever. Then they increased their rates. Then they decided to charge for more than average bandwidth. And this pushed me over the edge. If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid (which I wouldn't argue). It only costs them extra if they feel they need to add more hardware to handle the entire city downloading MP3s at 7:30 in the evening. Which they probably didn't, since the system was frequently pathetically slow in the evenings. Nope, they just decided they could grub more money from unsuspecting parents because their kids were downloading movies and music. So I dropped them. Some of you might recall (maybe?) I disappeared for a bit whilst dealing with some anti-technology depression. I bought a modem and went back to dial-up in order to save some cash and my sanity. My name is Jamie and I've been broadband-free for 5 months. And now it's just too damn much. You just can't use the internet at 42.8kbps. Not without losing your mind. This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M Powerpoint presentation full of photos from her party to 50 of her closest friends. She sent a preview email warning us first - like that helped. Then, apparently a bunch of people complained about the giant email they got. So she sent around another email saying, "Ooops, sorry. I've split the 1 big file into 5 smaller files." Again, a warning of impending but unavoidable doom. Then she sent another 11M of data, neatly split into smaller files. It would have taken me the better part of the day just to download them. And she's not the only one. My mother-in-law has had it explained to her that gigantic email attachments and mindless forwards piss me off. And now that I type this out, it makes perfect sense... it's my mother-in-law of course. So basically, I need broadband just to keep up. St
Jamie Hale wrote: It's run by the local telephone service monopoly provider. Switching to Bell Sympatico I assume? I used to user Bell, but then they capped the montly limit, which would put me down the river without a paddle, so I switched over to Rogers. So far, so good (1year+). Sure, it's more of a b*tch to have them show up and hook it up, compared to the incredibly easy DSL connection, but so far there's no sign of a cap coming, so I'm all good. I'd rather pay more to get unlimited than pay less and use up my limit in 3 days. Get back to broadband, life on dial-up is not worth living! :-D I prefer to wear gloves when using it, but that's merely a matter of personal hygiene [Roger Wright on VB] Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. [Rich Cook]
-
I had cable-based broadband for about 4 years. Rogers is the local media-monopoly provider, and as it turns out, they all suck. The entire company. Tech support was manned by people incapable of rational thought, and who had no real purpose other than to take calls from computer-newbies and give them the illusion that someone in the entire company had a clue. I learned that during our monthly outages there is no point to calling and asking if they had any idea when the system would work again, because the people at tech-support would never have any notion that anything was wrong in the first place. You just had to wait. An hour. A day. Whatever. Then they increased their rates. Then they decided to charge for more than average bandwidth. And this pushed me over the edge. If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid (which I wouldn't argue). It only costs them extra if they feel they need to add more hardware to handle the entire city downloading MP3s at 7:30 in the evening. Which they probably didn't, since the system was frequently pathetically slow in the evenings. Nope, they just decided they could grub more money from unsuspecting parents because their kids were downloading movies and music. So I dropped them. Some of you might recall (maybe?) I disappeared for a bit whilst dealing with some anti-technology depression. I bought a modem and went back to dial-up in order to save some cash and my sanity. My name is Jamie and I've been broadband-free for 5 months. And now it's just too damn much. You just can't use the internet at 42.8kbps. Not without losing your mind. This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M Powerpoint presentation full of photos from her party to 50 of her closest friends. She sent a preview email warning us first - like that helped. Then, apparently a bunch of people complained about the giant email they got. So she sent around another email saying, "Ooops, sorry. I've split the 1 big file into 5 smaller files." Again, a warning of impending but unavoidable doom. Then she sent another 11M of data, neatly split into smaller files. It would have taken me the better part of the day just to download them. And she's not the only one. My mother-in-law has had it explained to her that gigantic email attachments and mindless forwards piss me off. And now that I type this out, it makes perfect sense... it's my mother-in-law of course. So basically, I need broadband just to keep up. St
Jamie Hale wrote: Rogers It's nice to see these problems aflict the broadband markets too. I feel your pain - I've been living with it for the past five years. Jamie Hale wrote: 42.8kbps Blimey, even BT gave me 48.0kbps. Large e-mails though are a pain in the arse. If I find I'm downloading one when I wasn't expecting one I'll promptly cancel, telnet to the pop server and delete it. It's not my problem - it's theirs.
David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk
"Desktop Bob told me to start fires" - thematt
-
Jamie Hale wrote: Rogers It's nice to see these problems aflict the broadband markets too. I feel your pain - I've been living with it for the past five years. Jamie Hale wrote: 42.8kbps Blimey, even BT gave me 48.0kbps. Large e-mails though are a pain in the arse. If I find I'm downloading one when I wasn't expecting one I'll promptly cancel, telnet to the pop server and delete it. It's not my problem - it's theirs.
David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk
"Desktop Bob told me to start fires" - thematt
David Wulff wrote: I feel your pain - I've been living with it for the past five years. I've been following your troubles for a while now, and I can honestly say I have nothing to complain about after reading some of your stories. David Wulff wrote: Large e-mails though are a pain in the arse. If I find I'm downloading one when I wasn't expecting one I'll promptly cancel, telnet to the pop server and delete it. It's not my problem - it's theirs. That's how I was going to solve the problem. Trouble was that I couldn't remember my damn password. It finally came back to me at the same time I found their web-based client. And thankfully, I could just select and delete the big'uns. J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
-
I had cable-based broadband for about 4 years. Rogers is the local media-monopoly provider, and as it turns out, they all suck. The entire company. Tech support was manned by people incapable of rational thought, and who had no real purpose other than to take calls from computer-newbies and give them the illusion that someone in the entire company had a clue. I learned that during our monthly outages there is no point to calling and asking if they had any idea when the system would work again, because the people at tech-support would never have any notion that anything was wrong in the first place. You just had to wait. An hour. A day. Whatever. Then they increased their rates. Then they decided to charge for more than average bandwidth. And this pushed me over the edge. If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid (which I wouldn't argue). It only costs them extra if they feel they need to add more hardware to handle the entire city downloading MP3s at 7:30 in the evening. Which they probably didn't, since the system was frequently pathetically slow in the evenings. Nope, they just decided they could grub more money from unsuspecting parents because their kids were downloading movies and music. So I dropped them. Some of you might recall (maybe?) I disappeared for a bit whilst dealing with some anti-technology depression. I bought a modem and went back to dial-up in order to save some cash and my sanity. My name is Jamie and I've been broadband-free for 5 months. And now it's just too damn much. You just can't use the internet at 42.8kbps. Not without losing your mind. This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M Powerpoint presentation full of photos from her party to 50 of her closest friends. She sent a preview email warning us first - like that helped. Then, apparently a bunch of people complained about the giant email they got. So she sent around another email saying, "Ooops, sorry. I've split the 1 big file into 5 smaller files." Again, a warning of impending but unavoidable doom. Then she sent another 11M of data, neatly split into smaller files. It would have taken me the better part of the day just to download them. And she's not the only one. My mother-in-law has had it explained to her that gigantic email attachments and mindless forwards piss me off. And now that I type this out, it makes perfect sense... it's my mother-in-law of course. So basically, I need broadband just to keep up. St
Jamie Hale wrote: If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid ( I wouldn't say you're stupid, but your ISP probably pays per MB you download. Jamie Hale wrote: This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M See, THIS is why the Internet should come with some sort of IQ test for entry. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
Again, you can screw up a C/C++ program just as easily as a VB program. OK, maybe not as easily, but it's certainly doable. - Jamie Nordmeyer - 15-Nov-2002 -
Jamie Hale wrote: If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid ( I wouldn't say you're stupid, but your ISP probably pays per MB you download. Jamie Hale wrote: This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M See, THIS is why the Internet should come with some sort of IQ test for entry. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
Again, you can screw up a C/C++ program just as easily as a VB program. OK, maybe not as easily, but it's certainly doable. - Jamie Nordmeyer - 15-Nov-2002Christian Graus wrote: I wouldn't say you're stupid, but your ISP probably pays per MB you download. Uh, you mean pays the people who own the switches? That would be my ISP. We're talking about the LTM (Local Telephone Monopoly) here. Now I suppose formally my ISP is Bell Sympatico which really isn't Bell Canada on paper. But it is. So yes, they probably pay themselves in a round about grey-money type way. Enough to justify charging me an extra $10/G. J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
-
Christian Graus wrote: I wouldn't say you're stupid, but your ISP probably pays per MB you download. Uh, you mean pays the people who own the switches? That would be my ISP. We're talking about the LTM (Local Telephone Monopoly) here. Now I suppose formally my ISP is Bell Sympatico which really isn't Bell Canada on paper. But it is. So yes, they probably pay themselves in a round about grey-money type way. Enough to justify charging me an extra $10/G. J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
Be that as it may, at some point they must plug into the backbone of the net, unless they own the whole thing, and so they will then pay a fee for the traffic they use. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
Again, you can screw up a C/C++ program just as easily as a VB program. OK, maybe not as easily, but it's certainly doable. - Jamie Nordmeyer - 15-Nov-2002 -
Jamie Hale wrote: It's run by the local telephone service monopoly provider. Switching to Bell Sympatico I assume? I used to user Bell, but then they capped the montly limit, which would put me down the river without a paddle, so I switched over to Rogers. So far, so good (1year+). Sure, it's more of a b*tch to have them show up and hook it up, compared to the incredibly easy DSL connection, but so far there's no sign of a cap coming, so I'm all good. I'd rather pay more to get unlimited than pay less and use up my limit in 3 days. Get back to broadband, life on dial-up is not worth living! :-D I prefer to wear gloves when using it, but that's merely a matter of personal hygiene [Roger Wright on VB] Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. [Rich Cook]
Atlantys wrote: Switching to Bell Sympatico I assume? Yup. I tried it once about a year ago, and couldn't get anything more than about 9k/sec which didn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm hoping whatever it was has left. :) Atlantys wrote: I used to user Bell, but then they capped the montly limit, which would put me down the river without a paddle, so I switched over to Rogers. So far, so good (1year+). Sure, it's more of a b*tch to have them show up and hook it up, compared to the incredibly easy DSL connection, but so far there's no sign of a cap coming, so I'm all good. I'd rather pay more to get unlimited than pay less and use up my limit in 3 days. Rogers is good when it works. And as far as a cap goes, expect it soon. I read someplace about others doing it, and I can't imagine Rogers not following suit. Atlantys wrote: Get back to broadband, life on dial-up is not worth living! It's starting to look that way. :P J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
-
Jamie Hale wrote: Rogers It's nice to see these problems aflict the broadband markets too. I feel your pain - I've been living with it for the past five years. Jamie Hale wrote: 42.8kbps Blimey, even BT gave me 48.0kbps. Large e-mails though are a pain in the arse. If I find I'm downloading one when I wasn't expecting one I'll promptly cancel, telnet to the pop server and delete it. It's not my problem - it's theirs.
David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk
"Desktop Bob told me to start fires" - thematt
When I'm at home on 56k the best I ever get is 44kbps, and 99.9% of the time (including now) I'm on 41.2 :((. New laptop on Friday and hopefully it's new modem might help 'cause this one is old and was cheap at the time even though it cost £60 (it's an external, standard serial connection). I'm gonna be completely crazy, and say "broadband ain't that good..."? I mean, it didn't kill me having to switch back to dialup half as much as I thought it would. <Andrew ducks> :-D. -- Andrew.
-
When I'm at home on 56k the best I ever get is 44kbps, and 99.9% of the time (including now) I'm on 41.2 :((. New laptop on Friday and hopefully it's new modem might help 'cause this one is old and was cheap at the time even though it cost £60 (it's an external, standard serial connection). I'm gonna be completely crazy, and say "broadband ain't that good..."? I mean, it didn't kill me having to switch back to dialup half as much as I thought it would. <Andrew ducks> :-D. -- Andrew.
i just spent three days on dial-up while i was at the mother-in-law's. it was suck layered with ass smothered in hell with a dusting of awful. broadband will be the last thing to go, when my money finally runs out. -c
-
I had cable-based broadband for about 4 years. Rogers is the local media-monopoly provider, and as it turns out, they all suck. The entire company. Tech support was manned by people incapable of rational thought, and who had no real purpose other than to take calls from computer-newbies and give them the illusion that someone in the entire company had a clue. I learned that during our monthly outages there is no point to calling and asking if they had any idea when the system would work again, because the people at tech-support would never have any notion that anything was wrong in the first place. You just had to wait. An hour. A day. Whatever. Then they increased their rates. Then they decided to charge for more than average bandwidth. And this pushed me over the edge. If I download 1G or 10G in a month, it costs them nothing extra, unless I'm totally stupid (which I wouldn't argue). It only costs them extra if they feel they need to add more hardware to handle the entire city downloading MP3s at 7:30 in the evening. Which they probably didn't, since the system was frequently pathetically slow in the evenings. Nope, they just decided they could grub more money from unsuspecting parents because their kids were downloading movies and music. So I dropped them. Some of you might recall (maybe?) I disappeared for a bit whilst dealing with some anti-technology depression. I bought a modem and went back to dial-up in order to save some cash and my sanity. My name is Jamie and I've been broadband-free for 5 months. And now it's just too damn much. You just can't use the internet at 42.8kbps. Not without losing your mind. This morning, a friend of my wife decided she was going to email an 11M Powerpoint presentation full of photos from her party to 50 of her closest friends. She sent a preview email warning us first - like that helped. Then, apparently a bunch of people complained about the giant email they got. So she sent around another email saying, "Ooops, sorry. I've split the 1 big file into 5 smaller files." Again, a warning of impending but unavoidable doom. Then she sent another 11M of data, neatly split into smaller files. It would have taken me the better part of the day just to download them. And she's not the only one. My mother-in-law has had it explained to her that gigantic email attachments and mindless forwards piss me off. And now that I type this out, it makes perfect sense... it's my mother-in-law of course. So basically, I need broadband just to keep up. St
Hi Jamie, I've been using Rogers for several years and the only times of pain happened when they split from the @Home network and setup their own. There were a couple of months of growing pains, but seriously I can not remember any downtime since then. When did they up the rates? I'm still paying the same $20 a month since I started. And I haven't seen any mention of bandwidth caps. I'll consider myself fortunate I guess. Maybe because I'm out in the country :) Chris Meech "what makes CP different is the people and sense of community, things people will only discover if they join up and join in." Christian Graus Nov 14, 2002. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! Those leaks are driving me crazy! How does one finds a memory leak in a garbage collected environment ??! Daniel Turini Nov. 2, 2002.
-
Hi Jamie, I've been using Rogers for several years and the only times of pain happened when they split from the @Home network and setup their own. There were a couple of months of growing pains, but seriously I can not remember any downtime since then. When did they up the rates? I'm still paying the same $20 a month since I started. And I haven't seen any mention of bandwidth caps. I'll consider myself fortunate I guess. Maybe because I'm out in the country :) Chris Meech "what makes CP different is the people and sense of community, things people will only discover if they join up and join in." Christian Graus Nov 14, 2002. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! Those leaks are driving me crazy! How does one finds a memory leak in a garbage collected environment ??! Daniel Turini Nov. 2, 2002.
$20?!?! :wtf: I paid $39.95 for years. Then they jumped to $45. J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
-
$20?!?! :wtf: I paid $39.95 for years. Then they jumped to $45. J
May the bear never have cause to eat you.
Jamie Hale wrote: Then they jumped to $45 Maybe I should get them to send me another itemized statement :-O OTOH, The $20 is based on $40 a month, less $10 as a discount for other services I suscribe to, less $10 for the rental of the cable modem, which leaves only $20 a month for access. Chris Meech "what makes CP different is the people and sense of community, things people will only discover if they join up and join in." Christian Graus Nov 14, 2002. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! Those leaks are driving me crazy! How does one finds a memory leak in a garbage collected environment ??! Daniel Turini Nov. 2, 2002.
-
Jamie Hale wrote: Rogers It's nice to see these problems aflict the broadband markets too. I feel your pain - I've been living with it for the past five years. Jamie Hale wrote: 42.8kbps Blimey, even BT gave me 48.0kbps. Large e-mails though are a pain in the arse. If I find I'm downloading one when I wasn't expecting one I'll promptly cancel, telnet to the pop server and delete it. It's not my problem - it's theirs.
David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk
"Desktop Bob told me to start fires" - thematt
David Wulff wrote: Blimey, even BT gave me 48.0kbps. Right now I could live with that - I'm on 0kbps until January 8th (it was the earliest installation date I could get for a phone line/cable modem). This Christmas I can see myself doing a lot of reading (my mobile just isn't up the useage I'd normally give a fixed line!). I'm going to try to get the next version of ResOrg ready to go too, though my concentration isn't the best at the moment so I'm not making any promises! On the plus side, there's less than 1 week now before I'm me full-time. :-D Anna :rose: www.annasplace.me.uk
"Be yourself - not what others think you should be"
- Marcia GraeschTrouble with resource IDs? Try the Resource ID Organiser Add-In for Visual C++