Help! High speed internet questions

[ryco]

I live on the southern Oregon coast in a small town (pop 1200) which is the last coastal outpost not served with high speed. Our library receives high speed via satellite. The local video/computer store has a small antenna that delivers high speed, but one has to be in"sight range" to receive the signal which I am not. Home satellite service through a company like Hughes or Blue Sky is an option, but it is a little spendy and involves more hardware and a semi-high monthly rate (not too bad, but triple what I pay for dial up).

I'm not a geek or much of a computer guy. I bought this Mac in 2005 and have been enjoying and learning computers.

This article appeared in our little paper and I don't really understand what they are talking about:

"Verison has approved providing DSL high speed internet to our town. Enthusiasm was mild because we have been hearing plans and promises for years. This could be the real deal.
High speed is already available from Verizon's sister company using their cell towers. [First I've heard of it. They did install a steel palm tree cell tower on a hill last year]. If you get a cell phone signal [I don't own a cell phone, but I'm sure ppl get signals because I see 'em walk by talking on cell phones] then you can use it. Costs about $60 per month. Don't have to have a cell phone to use it."

OK, What is DSL, what is broadband? Is satellite better IYO? What would you do?

I would like to use this computer for long distance musical stuff with my buddies back in the big city one day, if that's even possible.
I'd like to be able to look at the YouTube clips you guys post without waiting 45 min for a 3 min clip.
Or download from iTunes without it talking 20 mins for a 3 min song.
I don't game.

Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge.
-Ryan Collins

[theshadow2001]

DSL is basically a technology thats used to access the interent on existing phone lines. It's going to be a lot faster than dial up.

Broadband refers to high speed internet. Bandwidth is a term that often appears in association with broadband. The more bandwidth that is available the faster your internet connection is going to be.

The best way to find out which is better is to look at the speed of the broadband offered by the different companies. Which is usually given in so many kilobits per second or mega bits per second. Then take into account other factors such as costs for the service or if there's a limit on how much data you can download per month.

Also doing a google search for internet speed checkers. Will tell you what the speed of downloading and uploading information to and from the internet is. It can vary with the amount of internet traffic at the time your doing it. However it will let you know how fast your current connection is and if you sign up for broadband you can run the same check and see how much faster it is. However anything is going to be better than dail up. You don't have to be downloading movies and 100's of albums to notice the difference, it makes even basic web surfing a lot easier. I'm sure once you try something faster you won't want to hear the words dial up again.

[ryco]

Thank you very much shadow!

When I go visit friends and family in the big city, they all have high speed. So I'm hip to how fast it is! Surfing, even on TB, is very slow here.

I do have a broadband speed checker on my desktop.

[theshadow2001]

Originally Posted by ryco

I do have a broadband speed checker on my desktop.

All you need now is the broadband

[Hawaii Islander]

If you check out Verizon's latest commercial, they have a small plug in wireless modem that allows your computer to access the internet via Verizon's cell phone tower/transmission system. Anywhere a cell phone works, your computer's internet service will work. That's their claim anyway.

I use RoadRunner through my cable tv provider. Very fast. Do you have cable tv in your town?

[ryco]

Yeah, I have cable TV through Charter and DTV satellite ('tho they don't provide broadband).

Charter upgraded the cable about 6 years ago to make pay-per-view movie service available,
Why they didn't wire in high speed at that time was a wonder to me. But it specifically stated in their contract with the city utilities dep't that high speed would not be made available. Not even discussed. Probably not enough population to make it worth their while, would be my guess.

I will check out RoadRunner and Verizon. They are my phone company anyway.
I beleive Edge Wireless & Cellular One have small dishes attached to the "palm tree" as well.

Thanx!