Internal and external modems have the same abilities. External modems have faster throughput. It surprised me to learn that. Internal modems are cheaper and they do reduce clutter. My brother in law had an internal that caught fire. Literally. Took out his motherboard, sound card and video card. Stunk up his house (and mine, I had to fix it) for days. I use this as an example of why not but I haven't talked to anyone who's ever even heard of something like this. My brother in law is the only person I know that can be standing in the middle of a money storm and be hit with a rock. I wanted to build a telephony box a while back, but the 2 port telephony card for it was $1500.00. It was to SMTP the voice mail to the mail server of your choice. Anybody want to loan me a card? I promise to give it back ... someday. >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2/20/2001 1:20:29 PM >>> > Internal modems: Just say no. I must admit I (gladly) haven't used a modem in months, but see new support for "winmodems", drivers that allow telephony on linux with these cheapies. Sounds like fun; I'd like to have a voice system where I can dial myself (say on a cell-phone) and have new email read to me, or dictate a short outgoing email... maybe even run some prog's just using voice I/O or even stream myself some ogg vorbis ; ) So why "say no" to internal modems?? They are cheaper, reduce clutter, and some allow for telephony. Isn't it fun to use a $2000 answering machine??? ben
