Anyone got cable internet?

[ali]

We are thinking of upgrading our connection and getting cable. Out of those of you who have moved with the times do you think it is worth it?
And which company do you believe is the best?

 

[imported_Broncaz]

Hi Ali,
I must admit that cable is much faster than dial up. The downfall is that cable tends to attract more virus' for some reason. I use Optus and some friends use Telstra andrumours are that Optus is quicker.I don't know how true it is andobviously is depends on what your computer is but I've been pretty happy with Optus and it's also cheaper. Hope it's helped you some.

 

[Willow]

It is faster.. not as fast as they advertise but it is noticeably faster.
Frees up the telephone line which is a plus. You're connected as soon as you turn on the PC and it works better with proxy servers. That is, if you want to have more than one computer connected to the internet, broadband cable seems more efficient than a regular ISP.

There are two main types: ADSL and Cable broadband. I have the latter because the Foxtel cable was already there and ADSL wasnt in the area at the time. I'm told ADSL is slightly better again but I don't know. It would be a good idea to ask.

I have Telstra BigPond (Optus are not in the area) - its about $75-80 per month, which about $30-50 more than an ISP dial-up account. Keep in mind that you're not paying for a phone call when you go online - with disconnections and so on, that can run out to $30 per month just by itself. So in reality, Broadband isnt much more at all for the regular user.

It works well for my household because we need the phone line to be free and we have more than one computer utilising the same internet connection via the proxy server.

As for ther viruses... that's probably right because of the increased online time. Leave your computer on all day and you'll probably be connected all day. I have Norton anti-virus in the system and it seems to deal with things well enough but I'm always careful not to open unsolicited attachments.

Generally, I don't have problems with viruses but I do notice more 'spyware' invading my system and slowing it down. There are ways to deal with this... I recently used a program called 'Ad-aware' and it located and scrubbed all the spyware. The worst offender seems to be 'Gator' who come in uninvited and send in all sorts of data gathering crap.

Hope that helps.

btw, broncaz, welcome to the forum.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

I had a capped ADSL service when I was in NZ and even at 128k it was way faster than being on a dial-up modem. Cable will be faster still but watch your data cap, it can get expensive if you exceed it.
As for viruses, Willow is basically right. The main reason that you'd get more viruses is that with more bandwidth you're dowloading more file and are more likely to cop something infected. As long as you've got good antivirus software this shouldn't be a problem. If you are on broadband I would set your antivirus software to automatically check for and download updates every couple of days, schedule it for the middle of the night or while you're at work so it doesn't inconvenience you. The more serious worry that you have with broadband is actually hackers rather than viruses. On a dial-up you are usually only connected while you are using the computer, and each time you reconnect your IP address will change. This gives hackers a limited amount of time to get into your system and cause damage, as once you disconnect they will have lost your IP. However cable and other broadband services are constantly connected, so the same IP address is connected to the internet for a long period of time, and broadband often uses static IP so that even when you disconnect and reconnect you will have the same IP. This means that your address is constantly visible to hackers who have a much larger window of opportunity to mess around with your system. The moral of the story is GET A FIREWALL. Either get a hardware appliance such as a SnapGear that sits between your cable modem and network, or run a software firewall on your PCs. There are a number of free software firewalls available on the net. When I first got broadband and installed a firewall, I was getting between 5 and 20 attemts per hour to hack my system, so trust me if you don't have one, you WILL get hacked.

 

[ozbash]

www.zonealarm.com is a good firewall ali. you can set your own security settings and even trace the ip,s trying to acess your p c.
its incredible how many hackers it stops.

 

[imported_Kaon]

I'm also thinking about getting ADSL but my biggest worry is data limits.

A 1Gb limit costs $60 a month.

How easy is it to go over 1gig especially when you view NRL and cricket matches on the net?

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Kaon; very bloody easy I'd say. I'd try to get a deal with a 2-3GB limit at least. I used to download a lot of MP3s via a dial up and even then managed to get over a GB a month.

 

[ozbash]

yea, but you listen to that headbanger crap.
soothing classical music dont take up much space,,, tchikofsky.....

 

[El Duque]

I have ADSL and pay about $90 for 512/128.It's worth it as it saves money not dialling an ISP 5-10 times a day.
If in Aus check out this site www.whirlpool.net.au as they have lots of broadband inks and info and forums.

 

[imported_JoeD]

While we are on computer related stuff, does anybody have an opinion on Mac computers? I'm thinking about buying a computer for home and I'm not sure which way to go. Macs are expensive and their processor speeds seem to be about 1/2 or 1/3 of PC speeds currently available. Is there any good reason to buy one besides thedifferent colours they come in?

 

[Edwahu]

If you want acomputer for mostly design/graphics/audio workthen a Mac is a good choice. Otherwise I would stick to a regular PC.

I have a PC question of my own. Can anyone recommend an alternative to Kazaa? All the P2Psoftwareive tried since Audiogalaxy has sucked.

 

[imported_Broncaz]

Willow,
Thanks

 

[SpaceMonkey]

JoeD what Edwahu said about PC vs Mac is right but I'll just add to that. Don't be suckered in by the fact that Macs are apparently only around 1/2 -1/3 of the speed. While the processors are slower in terms of MHz its like comparing a 3.5l 6 cylinder engine to a 1.8l turbo- the 1.8 will spin a lot faster in terms of rpm but they may only actually develop the same amount of horsepower.
A mac CPU can process more instructions per clock cycle that a Pentium 4, as can an AMD Athlon. For this reason don't be suckered in by Intels claims that their CPUs are the "fastest" just becaus they happen to run at 2.4GHz of whatever.

 

[imported_JoeD]

Thanks Edwahu & SM

 

[imported_eels fan...]

Edwahu...
Can i ask what you found wrong with Kazza? I mainly use Grokester which is the same program butwith an add on called Diet Kazza & it works fine. DK speeds the d/l up, removes ads, banners etc& extends the search. Not much around that beats it for mine, though theres enough programs to match it ie: iMesh.

Sorry if you knew about DK already but alot of people dont seem to.

http://www.dietk.com/

 

[Cronulla_Mania]

We use Macs at uni, and i find them to be frustrating and much more prone to crashing vs PCs. I dont know if thats just a uni phenomenon, but even with operating system, i think windows leaves them for dead.

Id love to know some more about Linux though. Does anyone use it?? Ive heard that its 100% customisable, and you can pretty much do as u please with it. But it sounds pretty tricky, so has anyone mastered it?

Cheers all,
Moffo

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Moffo: re Linux, the first thing to ask is what do you use your PC for?

 

[Cronulla_Mania]

This and that mate, im a bit of a fiddler to be honest. I mean, i don't write programs or use it for work purposes, but i would be interested to see what you could do with it. I've done some basic programming on Q and V-Basic in the past, and would be interested to see how much of an OS you could model on your own needs/wants.

Moffo

 

[legend]

Linux is very robust as an OS Moffo. I'm pretty sure rleague operate on a Linux platform with My SQL databases. They are pretty much the domain of cheap internet hosts who offer basic packages. Leagueunlimited runs on a windows platform and MS SQL databases, a slightly different language to My SQL databases, which are usually smaller as well.

I dodn't know Linux had an OS for PC's though, I thought it was for websites mainly.

 

[Edwahu]

eels fan,
The only problem I have with Kazaa is that it struggles to find alot of the songs I am looking for. Audiogalaxy would find anything I was looking for in no time but Kazaa usually struggles. Those Audiogalaxy users are out there somewhere, I was hoping someone knew where.

Thanks for suggesting the add-on, ill give it a try.