high speed or dial-up?

[Kurt]

I wasn't sure which way to "vote" (so I didn't). Dial up now. Will shift to cable grade 1st of Feb. but only 'cause I got a deal; $100 a month for 2nd tier digi. cable TV (no premium channels like HBO, etc.), IP phone (unlimited long distance) and internet. After a year, price goes up to "normal" - probably about $140/mo. & at that point I might go back to dial-up, unless they drop it to more like $120/mo. If I drop cable internet & they hike phone to compensate, I'll drop that too. As much on principle as cost.

Dial up only costs me $120/year. I'd pay a hair more than double that for high speed (over the long haul), but not the 4 times that TimeWarner, Comcast, & the like want to charge today.

My advice on web (SJ), is keep design lean and don't presume high speed. Presenting information (I presume that's what your web will be about) doesn't require a bunch of bandwidth chewing graphics to be effective - and it is a mighty irritation (even WITH high speed) to the user when web designers forget that simple fact. Where graphics are fundamental (e.g. real estate), be frugal with bandwidth by default (it's easy enough to provide alternate links for higher quality images).

While something like 70% of US housholds have cable TV or equiv. like dish, broadband penetration is only about 25%, and about 20% of households don't even have the option.

My 0.02

I try to tell people that most folks still have dialup and they are surprised. I still design for speed and simplicity. I don't understand all the high-bandwidth required sites being built.

 

[Beach Runner]

We just put high-speed with wireless in the beach house. I'm sure our guests will enjoy that. No, the SSID is not BeachRunner or Gators or anything obvious like that. LOL.

Last week I saw a U.S. Congressman or Senator (sorry - brain freeze) on CNN and he said he didn't have a need for the Internet. He called email a "computer letter." I really don't understand how anyone would admit that, much less feel that way, in this day and time. Although there is a lot of junk on the 'Net, it also contains a wealth of information that would be virtually impossible or impractical to obtain otherwise IMHO.

 

[OhioBeachBum]

I try to tell people that most folks still have dialup and they are surprised. I still design for speed and simplicity. I don't understand all the high-bandwidth required sites being built.

Your stuff is a good example of balance. Pretty lean given use of graphics for nav. and so on, and pretty much W3C compliant (browser portable). Been meaning to ask what tool(s) you use, and if you hand tune.

 

[Beach Runner]

I try to tell people that most folks still have dialup and they are surprised. I still design for speed and simplicity. I don't understand all the high-bandwidth required sites being built.

Tell me about it. When Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina were approaching and we were trying to decide whether or not to board up, it was virtually impossible to get any info from weather.com because downloading a page via dialup was simply too slow with all of the stuff they have on each page through which you're navigating. We finally gave up on obtaining our info from them.

 

[Ocean Lover]

After a year, price goes up to "normal" - probably about $140/mo. & at that point I might go back to dial-up, unless they drop it to more like $120/mo. If I drop cable internet & they hike phone to compensate, I'll drop that too. As much on principle as cost.

Dial up only costs me $120/year. I'd pay a hair more than double that for high speed (over the long haul), but not the 4 times that TimeWarner, Comcast, & the like want to charge today.


My 0.02

I don't know, OBB. That's how I got suckered in. I'm even impatient with broadband sometimes, I could never go back to dial up.

 

[Kurt]

Your stuff is a good example of balance. Pretty lean given use of graphics for nav. and so on, and pretty much W3C compliant (browser portable). Been meaning to ask what tool(s) you use, and if you hand tune.

Thanks - I've always tried to keep things light but never worried about bloated code like programmers do - Fusion is knocked for that but I use whatever gets the job done. The code size is negligible compared with content.
I don't like putting more than 10 photos or so on a page but sometimes it happens.

 

[OhioBeachBum]

I don't know, OBB. That's how I got suckered in. I'm even impatient with broadband sometimes, I could never go back to dial up.

I get that - I have really really big fat pipes at work & still sometimes not "fast enough" ;-) I know that's why they do the teasers - I didn't know ('til I tried) that they would negotiate. Best "deal" offered 'til I said not good enough was $12/mo. - called back with better deal 2 days later.

I'm a patient dude when it comes to signing on to feed someboy else's re-occurring revenue stream...

 

[audie]

Tell me about it. When Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina were approaching and we were trying to decide whether or not to board up, it was virtually impossible to get any info from weather.com because downloading a page via dialup was simply too slow with all of the stuff they have on each page through which you're navigating. We finally gave up on obtaining our info from them.

i hear ya br - there is nothing more frustrating than a page that won't load because there is so much crapola on it.