!!!HOT!!! $9.99 Diamond SupraMax 56K V.92 PCI Modem

[Middy493]

56k modems.....hahhahahaha....lol...muahahhaha...zipping around on anandtech @1300 kbps with comcast!

 

[Matt L]

hahhahahaha....lol...muahahhaha Comcast!?!!? Comcast and AOL are the DEVIL! Do you know where you've been? Comcast does...... Comcast will never be allowed in my home!

Back on topic, I've got a Zoom .92 and I can't say I've noticed any improvement over my USR .90, but none of my dial ups use .92 yet.

 

[Salvador]

Is that what a Winmodem is? Is it a modem that requires more power from your processor and depends on software more? Hence "win" modem as in Windows? Are Winmodems cheaper and less desirable? I couldn't stand to use a regular modem now anyway after having cable for the past 2 years. ATT went out for about 2 weeks because of the @home ordeal, so I signed up for some free AOhell in the meantime. Man.. You couldn't pay me to use AOhell or dial up after having cable. Even if cable went down 1 day a month, I'd still be with cable.

BTW.. Who cares if your ISP knows where you've been? I can care less if somebody somewhere knows that I visit the monster booties website from time to time. I'm not running for office or anything, so who cares. Besides, if you run a firewall, doesn't it block stuff like that?

Sal

 

[Devistater]

<< Hmm..I heard D/L speed is faster with a V.92 modems as well due to better compression. But then, I'd never use a modem anyway. Even if you never play games online or access music and video through the web, paying extra for broadband is worth it, IMHO, just based upon the time saved from not waiting for web page to load up. For most people, paying extra $20 per month is worth it compared to waiting hours per week in front of your PC waiting for website to load. >>



Nope, thats totally BS. What do most people d/l? .zip files, .mp3 files, .exe installer files, .mpg files, .avi files (games, music, movies etc). What do they have in common? They are all ALREADY COMPRESSED. You generally cannot get more than a couple percent more compression out of something thats already compressed using loseless compression algorithims. Now, if you browse the web and d/l massive megabyte large text files, sure you will have more d/l speeds. Keep in mind that the v.90 has theoretically 2x up to 4x compression, 2x56=112, and 4x56=224. Do you ever see anything approaching this on dialup v.90 modems? Nope, and you don't on v.92 either.

As for the extra money, I've found out that an additional phone line costs around $20 a month more (sometimes less sometiems more) and the unlimited internet access costs around the same amount (perhaps less or more). So in my case I pay about the same for dsl, $50 a month is only about $10 more a month than I'd pay anyway, I think its worth it. But only when I moved was I able to get it, my previous place had no broadband and basically no plans to ever bring it out to where I was.

 

[onelove]

OffTopic (sorry) comcast eases user tracking. Comcast appoints internal privacy czar. I'm sure he'll take good care of us, look our for us; sort of a big brother, you might say.

OnTopic. This is a good deal for a decent winmodem. Thanks for the headsup, NCG.

 

[HepDude]

<<

<< "For $15 shipped you can get a v.90 intel PCI hardware modem in retail packaging, I've ordered two of these so far and it seems to work fine."

i'm like the old lady @ wendy's "where's tha link?" tia >>




Actually I got them on ebay, do a search for intel modem and you can find plenty, most of the ones that look cheaper than $15 have enough shipping to add up to about $15. Anyway, the guy I ordered two from has a website:
http://www.justmodem.com/
>>



I checked on this Intel modem and it is not a hardware controller modem ! :|

 

[BlackMamba]

yeah the Intel HAM modems on ebay are definately NOT hardware. they are controllerless, but have "hardware-like" features. anyway, the best modems in my book (non-hardware) are Lucent (Agere) WinModems. Mine is connected at 53.2 right now - downloading at 5.81 k steady !

 

[Praxis]

<< yeah the Intel HAM modems on ebay are definately NOT hardware. they are controllerless, but have "hardware-like" features. anyway, the best modems in my book (non-hardware) are Lucent (Agere) >>

HAM stands for Host Accelerated Modem, which Intel claims to be a hydrid between software and hardware modems, minimizing CPU requirements. I wonder what kind of a performance penalty HAM modems impose. I understand that a typical software modem gobbles about 60 or so MHz, which is enough to really hobble a machine with a CPU less than 166 MHz or so. I have been told that lousy phone line conditions can also impose a performance penalty on a Host Signal Processing (HSP) modem, since it forces the processor to do error correction.
Of course if you are using a current CPU you won't even notice this kind of performance penalty, in all belikes. (I'm only interested in CPU load because I volunteer with an group that fixes up donated Pentiums for shipment to Cuba so doctors can access medical databases, and the State Department won't let us ship anything faster than a Pentium 200, so we're looking for cheap modems that we can stick in some of these boxes & we can't even find 14.4 hardware modems anymore.)

In any case, at least Intel offers drivers for Linux, though I think Lucent "Lin"modem support is much better, since the Intel driver does not support kernel 2.4, only 2.2.12 to 2.2.18.

 

[KKCC]

Had to add my .02

I went from a winmodem to a hardware modem & did see a slight increase in speed, also less dropped calls

Instead of getting a second phone line go to call wave. They have a free service. When you are on line it acts like an answering machine, & takes a message. It will play back through your speakers. There is a small (.5 x 3")window that displays ads but you can place it anywhere & it doesn't geet in the way. I know I lose a little bandwidth, but I got that back with a hard modem & never miss a call. You have to get busy call forwarding from the telco ~ 1.5/month. Works Great

Call Wave

 

[Devistater]

<< yeah the Intel HAM modems on ebay are definately NOT hardware. they are controllerless, but have "hardware-like" features. anyway, the best modems in my book (non-hardware) are Lucent (Agere) WinModems. Mine is connected at 53.2 right now - downloading at 5.81 k steady ! >>



Oh? Sorry about that, I thought it was hardware... especially since I saw linux drivers were availible. Generally a sure sign that its a windows modem is if it requires some version of windows, and its a hardware one if it supports other operating systems. Ah well, I have one installed in my granny's computer and it works fine, my cousin is also using one and says its fine. Anyway, guess I was mistaken there guys, it does work fine for what I put it into, but those are both 1 gig+ CPUs, so sorry about that.