Computers Lost Broadband

The practical aspect of my prior Periodic Perspective newsletters that seemed to be missing in the last issue was a tech. article. I’ve always been a go-to guy, especially in our house and extended family, regarding computers and similar gadgets. It seems to be one of my gifts in life to catch on quickly to the potential of ever growing technology. I am utterly and completely awed by it and can’t wait for the next advance.

So, I’ve decided to share some of my insights and discoveries, along the way, and see how popular that turns out to be. #Also, always remember, that we all—myself included—learn as much from our mistakes, as we do from our discoveries, and there are plenty of them. If we can help one another to avoid even a few, this section will have achieved one of its goals. Another is to milk every bit of tech. savvy we can get toward achieving our personal and business related objectives.

For this issue, I’ve decided to focus on an event that took place last month. We lost Comcast internet service for almost two solid weeks. What is a person to do?

This was awful! From being very well organized and slamming my work up and down on my website to test, perfect and publish, I was relegated to going to FedEx-Kinko’s (now FedEx Office, but will always be “Kinko’s” to me) and spend hours, just attending to my email traffic. I would give myself a C- or D+ on how I handled the experience, but how would I handle it differently to get an A next time?

The first step in the analysis is to ask, “Which broadband service(s) should I use, regularly, from day to day?”

I no longer consider telephone dial up an option, except when that is the only choice. Since Comcast has no dial up service, I have to use my wife’s MSN account in those rare circumstances wherein the telephone option is used, usually on trips to remote areas.

In our area, we have three realistic broadband options. I checked a couple of years ago regarding what it would cost to have a T-1 line installed. The monthly charge was $1,600. So, I’m not counting that, although it would have been an option I seriously considered, when I managed a law firm.

The realistic options are: Comcast, SBC Global and satellite. My friend, who’s an MIT graduate told me that satellite is, and will always be, slower than the other two. So, I don’t count that one either.

Month in and month out for the past several years, I would call Comcast service far superior to SBC Global. SBC was slower and less reliable. So, going back to that would be depressing.

DSL also put a loud, screeching sound on the phone line vis-a-vis voice calls. So, even using it as a backup is not appealing.

I also thought it would be a good idea to try to “add” some capability to my systems, so I considered getting a mobile internet service for my laptop. That meant choosing among AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. Due to prior dealings with AT&T and Sprint, I have a self-imposed lifetime ban on doing business with either of them. This is in protest to what I consider to have been their unethical and outrageous business practices.

By the way, is there such a thing as an honest cell phone company? I would love to hear your thoughts.

There is an exception to the above rule for me in the event of a monopolistic advantage (why penalize myself?) and I’d also like to have an i-phone, so I considered AT&T anyway on that basis.

Yet, I remained gun shy. In looking at the AT&T mobile internet options, they all included “data” transfer limits and what I presume would be outrageous charges, if one exceeded them. Sprint once charged my daughter $47.50 to download one song onto her phone (also the last). So, they’ve created mistrust for everyone else on that technology. The companies are uniformly unable or unwilling to say what the charges would be in advance and unwilling to reverse them, if it’s a test charge, such as the tune above.

I didn’t check with Verizon, because I found a satisfactory solution before evaluating that possibility. Also, I have some ethical misgivings about Verizon, as well, although not yet to the level of a self-imposed lifetime ban.

Also, the AT&T mobile service did not work on a friend’s i-phone, while visiting our house, even though she got five bars for voice calls. Another of my friends said that it will pick up a signal from a router, if you have the phone set for that. But what good would that do, if basic internet service was out?

Insofar as the i-phone is concerned, I’ve decided to wait and see if/when it gets freed up from AT&T’s stranglehold. I’ve read that Apple is in talks with Verizon for a possible deal for 2010.

So, what is the solution I found?

First and foremost, I had to get my laptop up to speed. In this instance, I had to buy a new one, because my old one just had its fifth anniversary and is slow and inept by today’s standards. (After much research I bought a Dell E6400, running Windows XP, although I took a good look at HP’s, as well as the Dell XPS-13, which is what I would have gotten, if it had supported Windows XP. Changing to Vista from everything I’ve heard and understand would make too many of my peripherals and too much of my software obsolete—all of which, collectively, is worth way more than the cost of a new computer.)

Then, I installed all of my most salient software on my new laptop and activated it. So, by then, my internet needs became “portable.”

Tech. rule #1: “If you’re in business and/or rely heavily on your computer system for everyday usage, always have a portable system up to date and ready to go in the event of a power or internet outage.”

So, what about the internet itself? How did I replace Comcast?

If we didn’t live in a metropolitan area, where internet access and “hot spots,” are readily available, I would have to reconsider the mobile internet access option. A friend of mine told me that with Verizon, he was able to supply his A-student daughter with continuous, uninterrupted internet access in the car for a trip from San Francisco to Provo, Utah. And, for those of you from the East, much of that is desert! He couldn’t, however, say what it cost, because his employer picks up the tab for this service.

Kinko’s offers a “use our computers with internet access” option in our town for $15 per hour. Problem: you can’t use your own programs on them. There’s an amazing technology, called MojoPac (caution: use their free program; there is NO tech. support, even if you pay for it), which allows a person to carry one’s programs on an external hard drive. There’s another technology, called U-3, which allows a person to carry some of one’s programs on a jump drive. But, Kinko’s has their computers set so that neither of them works on their machines.

So, we’re back to the privately owned laptop.

Kinko’s offers a hard-wired laptop internet access option for $6 per hour. This doesn’t sound like much, unless you’re somewhat like me and use the internet all day, every day. Then, we’re talking $48 per day, or around $1,500 per month for internet access. And, that’s if there’s no evening or weekend internet use.

What I ended up with was T-mobile hot spots for a flat fee of $10 per month, since we’re t-mobile customers. All is not rosy with T-mobile, as I have found their ethical behavior lacking, as well. But, so far, my only ban on them is to not buy any equipment directly from them—ever, in that they have made several “deals” with me and then reneged, when it was time to deliver. Again, if there’s such a thing as an honest cell phone company, I would love to hear about it.

My theory is that after at least eight (8) years of deregulation and lack of retribution for dishonest business practices, many US companies have gotten out of hand and brazenly obtuse, along with it. Perhaps that will change.

Until then, I am now relying on a new laptop and a T-mobile Hotspot account, as my backup for the next time I lose Comcast, which, sadly, occurred just a few days after I concluded my first draft of this article.