I'm interested in people's opinions on this topic, which comes up often and is a nagging concern to those whose systems came with a winmodem. Under what circumstances does the winmodem cripple performance and should be replaced by another winmodem brand or another "real" modem (which, as I see in ads, costs $50 and up)? [1]I hear that "winmodems" are worse than the regular ones (which cost over $50) because they load down system resources doing functions which happen in the regular modem's hardware. [2]Some winmodem brands are reputed to be much worse than others. which are which? (I have a Conexant SoftK56 PCI Modem(M).) [3]If you get a reasonable brand, and have a pentium class machine, many folks do not agree that one must "yank it out and throw it away. They say that is true for a 486 class machine, but a Pentium would be able to handle the load. Where are the CPU and RAM dividing lines on this? (I use the computer to surf the Internet with free ISP's, have Celeron 433 and 32 MB RAM.) [4]Getting the latest driver for the modem may improve the situation. thepccat ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
