Is High Speed Internet still new to people?...

[slick]

Sorry for the confusion guys.

I meant that I can understand that there are people out there that don't have HSI, but this guy? He had a laptop that was apparently company issued, and a cat5 cable to connect to a network with, but then proceeds to fiddle with dialing. It was odd.

Though, considering I live in Oklahoma, I always felt that we got the shaft when it came to technology, but I guess if I have had DSL for 8 years or so now (it was a 1.5mbps/128kbps service, now it its 3.0mbps/384kbps, not bad for $20 a month), its not that bad of a state

[TNT]

My first dialing experience was also in the heyday of the one-line BBS (go WWIV!). I found a list of numbers and passwords from all of the boards I was on. There were 17 of them. One of them was in a different state. I didn't even have a computer. Just an amber screened dumb terminal. The modem (a whopping 2400 baud, and this was in 1991) was more advanced.

Does anybody remember PC-Pursuit, a service from Sprint?

[draggar]

Don't worry, as a web programmer on the side I need to design my sites for 56K users since the vast majority of the world's internet users are at 56K or lower.

(I think a very high percentage of the US's internet users are also at 56K)

[Andara Bledin]

Good for you, Draggar.

I run into way too many sites that are optimized for people with high speed connections with flash animations all over the place, and tons of java coding and all sorts of bells and whistles that make me want to strangle the developers. And no way to skip to a lower-demand version of the site.

^-.-^

[Noelegy]

Go into any area outside a large city. You would be surprised at how few people have high speed internet.

My parents live in a town that still has pulse dialing.

[MadMike]

I run into way too many sites that are optimized for people with high speed connections with flash animations all over the place, and tons of java coding and all sorts of bells and whistles that make me want to strangle the developers.

Or sometimes, the developers just don't know that the they're doing.

Back when I was still on dialup, I went to get some info from the site for my son's school, and the picture on the front page took forever to load. I right-clicked on the pic, and it was a little over 2 meg.

I sent them a friendly email, reminding them that some of us were still stuck on dialup, and suggested they reduce the size of the pic.

Sometime after that, I brought up the site again, and while the pic was now smaller, the page still took forever to load. I checked it again, and the pic was still the same size as it was before. Either they simply changed the display size without reducing the actual pic, or they somehow managed to shrink it down without reducing the file size at all.

Years later, when my son get into computers and did a lot of work on the computers at the school, I would find out that was just one of many examples of stupidity of the so-called computer experts at the school.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, yeah. I've been the one to try to explain to some of my bosses cronies how to change the file size of images without altering the display size. Most people just don't get it.

Actually, most people don't realize that for the vast majority of all pictures taken with a digital camera, the lowest quality setting is more than adequate for nearly every use.

And then there are the ones who optimize a site for one browser (usually IE) and will completely fail to even check to make sure the site is useable in any other browser. I've done my fair share of educating web owners about not alienating everyone who won't use IE.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

You'll note a lack of images on this site. I used to have dial-up and I'm painfully aware that it's a bugger to do anything on the Internet on some sites.

Rapscallion

[rerant]

I think I'm one of the last surviving dialup users, and as such I sometimes get a little confused when it comes to highspeed. Granted, I don't have a computer (yet) that is set up for it, but as soon as my laptop comes in I'm certain it will take no longer than five minutes to get it figured out.

[DesignFox]

As a web developer I can say that I try to test web pages on multiple browsers (it's a great way to debug problems) and I do keep in mind that most of the world is on dial-up. My clients do require the occasional video trailer posted, though. We keep them at a lower resolution, but I'm sure they still take awhile to load on dial-up. The rest of the site I try to keep files at lower resolutions and sizes so that the data itself doesn't take long to load.

My one client actually had a fancy pants flash site. It was gorgeous...and slow and clunky and far from user friendly. She completely scrapped that for my simple html.

I hate flash sites. (unless its a movie or game site that I KNOW is for flash animations- not say a restaurant displaying their menu in flash which is just f-ing stupid)

threadjack over.
on topic- I still don't see how a guy with a cat-5 cable and a laptop didn't know what he had to do.....

[Andara Bledin]

He probably thought the cat 5 was a form of dedicated phone line.

As I mentioned before, this is a networking thing, not a connection speed thing. Even if you have DSL, you still have to have the modem make the connection before you are online. But with a network, the modem is constantly connected, and you just need to plug in to take advantage of it.

^-.-^

[AFpheonix]

Heh. I have cable here at the apartment, and I love it. We've had maybe 1 outage in the 2 years we've been here.

At the farm, we just recently ugraded from dial-up to wireless. We got a deal from the internet guy because we let him put some of his equipment on the side of our barn so he can send signal further into the hills.
Going from 32 k (our phone lines suck) to much faster is heaven I can actually update mom's antivirus!

[Andara Bledin]

Heh. It took us two days to fully update World of Warcraft with dialup.

I had cable Internet for a while years ago through Charter. They sucked bad. Not only was the speed only so-so, but the service would go down at least 3 times a week just after the tech support shut down for the night.

The last straw was when they blamed the artifacts we'd get during our tv watching on our tv. Never mind the fact that our friends across the street got the same exact artifacts. We figure it was because they would get a digital signal from corporate, then they would do a high speed transfer of the programs to tape (they told us that's what they did), and the dubbing system was crappy, so the tapes had artifacts during playback.

They were arrogant and cheap enough that I'm not ever going back.

^-.-^

[RichS]

When we stayed at a temporary place while waiting construction on our house, I had high-speed (DSL) for 6 glorious months...

When I called to move my phone line, they said I'd still have high-speed...unfortunately, I later found out I was 13,000 ft. too far away. They at least gave me 6 months of free dial-up...but it's still dial-up!

Maybe soon, though, I'll have it back. They've been aggressive expanding the range of DSL around here, and their goal, I've heard, is to have the lakeshore here wired by the end of the year.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Trust me when I say... No you don't. I used to think the same thing... "I'm fine with Dial-Up, I can't afford Cable or DSL, so I'll just stick with Dial-Up."

Yee god was I wrong. When I finally came into some money and got my Cable installed, I was in HEAVEN. It is so very awesome.

I have, a few times, had to downgrade to Dial-Up, wether my cable was out, or at someone elses place and it is TORTURE, it is something I could barely endure.

The speed difference is INSTANTLY noticable.

I silently weep for anyone who has Dial-Up.

I've been weeping for the last couple of weeks - I'm currently on a backup dial-up account and it sucks compared to DSL. Hopefully our DSL issues will be straightened out this coming week.

I've had cable and it was great, but in my area it's becoming rather pricey, so we had to switch back to DSL (which we had for 2 years before going to cable.) DSL isn't too bad actually (unless it was being used on my old desktop, which runs slower than molasses on a winter day.) Then it was pure TORTURE just to get a page to come up.

Sadly, there are still neighborhoods that can only get dial-up. Where my dad and stepmom live in the county, cable isn't available nor is DSL. Satellite would be the only other option other than dial-up, but it's still a bit expensive for their price range. They've asked the phone company to let them know when DSL is available in their area, but so far the phone company still hasn't expanded, which I suspect has something to do with the distance from the nearest central office.

But what do I know. I'm not tech support, nor do I play one online.