Thinking of DSL, need ISP reccommendations
 

I might as well bite the bullet as much time as I seem to be online. I'm in SoCal, what's the best ISP/DSL package here?

I have Verizon land line service and that is nearly impossible to get around in Long Beach. I've tried, belive me. I don't care what they say about deregulation. It's like CA is a right to work state, but try to go to work in a union shop as a non union worker. Sure, it's legal on the books, but it ain't gonna happen.

I have digressed, but suffice to say, I'm stuck with Verizon. What should I do with that connection? Mind you, I only need this a couple hours a day, so go easy on me. I don't want to spend a fortune. I've already dismissed the possibily of satelite connectionthru my existing Direct TV. It's too expensive.

Now that I'm at this, what's the deal anyway? You need a cable or a dish, you need wireless, you need an ISP with a high speed connection and you need a land line or two for fax, good quality calls, etc. Jeez, what's your monthly communication budget? I think I could lease a small car with the outlay.

Milt,

Can you go the cable modem route?

In my area, I was able to choose between DSL and Cable Modem service. I chose Cable because of the "one stop shopping" for the service. The cable modem service included the modem, the "dial tone", and the ISP in a single package. DSL required me to contract the ISP separately from the "dial tone". I figured that if I had problems, the ISP and the "dial tone" provider would be blaming each other and I would need to referee.

On the other hand, several of my neighbors do have DSL and they seem happy as well.

I wish I had cable. DSL has been great but unfortunately I can't get rid of my land line since I have DSL.

Yes, but you could not get rid of your cable TV for satelite if you had cable modem !

Aurel

From what I understand, you are required to have a cable into your house to get a cable modem but you DO NOT need to take the Cable TV service to get Cable modem service.

That said, most services would be foolish to not give you a discount if you use both aspects of the service but they are independent even though they come in the the same wire.

Untrue.

Before my father died, he had The Dish Network in the house.I really didnt like the service (dumb me), so I had Cox Cable come out and install cable into the house. Both installers that were there told me that they themselvs use the Dish Network for their TV service, and use Cox for the cable modem service. Im currently looking to go back to The Dish Network, or Direct TV, and when I do decide, I can lose all of my cable tv receivers, but can still use the cable modem service at $49.00 a month.

For light use, I'd go with Verizon since they do the line as well. If you want to run servers, etc. then Speakeasy is the only way to go. Heck, with Speakeasy, you can even sell some/part/all of your connection off to someone else (via wireless, etc) - and Speakeasy will even handle the billing, etc. for you.

All depends on what you want to do....

Help me out here some, guys. That sounds great, but don't I still need something like Yahoo or Earthlink when I get the DSL? Currently, I have Compuserve. It's a little pricey, but the virus and spm filters are super. I have no spam and never get those eamils that are always warned about. I never get those emails about 10 million bucks tied up in a foreign account. For those reasons, I have played along with Compuserve. I haven't had to install a firewall (maybe I should) as all seems well with CS.

I'm not a computer guy like a lot of you. I'm self taught in the fundamentals. It's all I need. Just want to speed things up a bit.

Previously, I inquired here about the high speed dial ups and folks here explained that I wasn't gonna get muc more than I have rifht now, except for frequently visited sites.

I have no problem with the Pelican site. Seems to load fast unless there's several pics on a page. When I Google things and go to other sites, many don't want to load or take forever. And I've never seen any of the video clips that some have posted like track footage. Part of that is my machine. As I said, I'm moving up on the hardware side and I should be able to download that stuff. But I sure don't want to do that on a dial up.

Back to my question (I tend to ramble), I still need an ISP with Verizon DSL, correct?

Whoever you DSL provider will be your ISP. FWIW, if you get Satellite, get Directv with Tivo. Check out Directv's web site. They have some really good deals on new installs.

Yes, you should have a firewall. ZoneAlarm works great, even with a modem connection, and if you get cable, dsl, wireless, carrier pigeons, whatever - you will want to buy a router/firewall box for it - under $50 at best buy. Out of the wall, into your cable or dsl modem, into the firewall, into your computer.

Whoever provides your service will give you an email account, webspace, and possibly newsgroup access. You will need to use one of the many various web browsers (Mozilla kicks butt - Free, free, no popups unless you want 'em), email clients (again Mozilla - has a spam filter in it that you train), or whatever Internet application you want (instant messaging, irc chat, online gaming, etc).

My DSL service with SBC (SBCGlobal) has been flawless.

The only other indispensible technology I own is DirecTV with Tivo. All that goodness in one box! Right now DirecTV is selling DirecTivo units for $99 installed.

'Course Zeke ignored my hernia advice. Don't know why I bother...;)

Neil, I have DirectTV with Tivo. It's great. Just don't want to pay $65/mo. for satelilte Internet. They show no mercy. Now that Murdoch (I think it's him) is buying DTV, I look for it to be more.

id10t,

I tried Zone Alarm but did not like it because it blocked file sharing on my LAN. I know I can password protect my PCs (one is XP and one is Win98) but then my wife (who has the Win98 Box) gets pissed. Any decent workarounds?