The Comcast guy came today—on time and everything—and installed our shiny new cable modem (see here for why we can’t get DSL). Since my desktop machine blew up yesterday, I had him use my work laptop to get things configured. He was confused when he couldn’t find an Internet Explorer icon on my desktop, and I had to show him where it was hidden deep in the Start menu. Bad sign.
Then, after doing exactly jack squat (the laptop was already configured to do DHCP), he told me I’d need to start Internet Explorer whenever I wanted to get on the Internet. I gave him my best “How stupid are you?” stare and, thinking that perhaps Comcast used some backwards IE authentication scheme, asked if I had to use Internet Explorer before using any other network applications. This prompted him to give me his best “How stupid are you?” stare, after which he said “We only support Internet Explorer.”
Aha. So “Internet” equals “web”. I get it.
All confusion aside, he was a nice guy and didn’t even try to install any of the crap software Comcast requires him to install (“It’s chock full of spyware and it just uses up memory anyway,” he said). Good man.
Initial tests show a downstream speed of 1600+Kb/s and upstream of about 220Kb/s. Not bad.
Comments
Finally Ryan sees the light
What was I telling you back when I worked for @Home?
Also, my condolences on paying $100 for the deluxe install instead of $50 for the "Here's the stuff, you get yourself set up while I go make sure we're getting a signal" deal.
Re: Finally Ryan sees the light
I still think DSL is a better value -- especially Speakeasy DSL, since they don't care what you do with it as long as you don't break the law or disrupt the service of their other users. Also, I've actually been bouncing off this 256Kb upload limit a lot in the last few days, and it's pretty damn annoying. Still, the download speeds have rocked.
dies.
Now from any site, never will you hit above 300k/s unless your one of the lucky few who gets from 9pm-6am uncapped Bandwith