On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Bill Holt wrote:
> First local item - the store: > > Is it safe now? Could I send my computer-novice brother-in-law unchaperoned > and be reasonable in expecting him to come home less frustrated rather than > more so? He's also my fishing buddy, so I really don't want him pissed at > me. I've been giving them some good words as they've been giving good customer service. I usually mention that before the old people were bought out, they weren't known for great service though. I figure this lets me evangelize and cover my back at the same time. > Second local item - I'm considering signing up for Igou dsl: Me too. Last time I checked they didn't handle my area [J-Town]. > Reasons for Iglou: > > 1) I have a strong bias toward local businesses and am willing to pay a > modest premium to satisfy my preference. > 2) In the years I've been a dial-up customer and had my site hosted there, > I've never had anything less than very good service - even when the scew-up > was mine and my attitude was approaching hostile. I host a pair of rack-mounted servers there. The price is good [they're redoing the price structure at the moment so I won't mention pricing atm], the uptime is good [I've spotted the link die a handful of times in the last year for 5 minutes or so, but I maintain an active session to the servers for around 12 hours of the day]. Going back in time, my wife used them for a long time for dial-up and always got pretty good service. > 3) It seems that both the cable and telephone companies go out of there way > to piss me off at least once every few years, and I have other sources of > irritation which aren't optional. Yep. Coming from a land where we used to complain about our telephone monopoly [BT had ADSL for years but never let it roll out, it was only when America finally started to move on it that they had to], I'm amazed at how iffy the US phone system can be. Only the banking system has raised more grumbles out of me :) > However, this shift is a big deal to me in that I'll be changing a lot of > things in response to it. My current plan is to go with the "family" plan > that provides four fixed IP numbers, set up a router system in house and > move some of the less frequently accessed files from my site to one of my > personal machines. This would allow me to use a less expensive site package > which would nearly pay for the dsl. The four fixed IPs were interesting me, but I'm not sure what I would do with them now. My cable IP has yet to change [and when it does I'll just change the DNS to it, only I use that so not going to kill anything] and I can always move around the home network from the machine I connect back to. > My concern is, of course, with speed and reliability. I don't care if a > client on a T3 has to wait two minutes for a file to download, instead of > the 20 seconds he might be used to, but would be unhappy if it took half an > hour or if there were a lot of "system down" episodes. These transfers are > very infrequent so speed is less critical, but availability is important. Yeah. Iglou are still using BellSouth(?) DSL behind the scenes. They're just acting as a computer-smart reseller for you, so really your trust is on BellSouth here. Until I move to DSL I've no clue, but thought I'd show support :) Hen | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
