PE> Regardless of cost?  I would say the USR Courier, but I haven't tried 
PE> some
PE> of the other market contenders (like Hayes), which may be better (and more
PE> expensive).  Including cost, I would opt for the cheapest Yum Cha modem I
PE> could find.

RJ> I don't want to havee to give my first-born as a deposit on it! I've got 
RJ> a coupla ton squirrelled away and could prolly go $400.00.

I think I saw the courier going for $437 or something in AUST_ADS.

PE> You do realise that if you're doing O/S data transfers, that you're
PE> probably not going to see ANY speed improvement over the 14400?  

RJ> Why for? I woulda thought that 28800 or even 33k with EC would be a whole 
RJ> lot quicker than 14400.

The OS link is often very slow (haven't you noticed that?).  Haven't you
ever noticed the stuff being painted onto your screen far slower than a
normal BBS menu?  If you're getting worse performance than screens on a BBS
(like my BBS), then the limiting factor is the speed of the link, not the
speed of your modem.

PE> probably only see a speed improvement if you are transferring a file
PE> to/from your local ISP.  What is the *exact* application you are using
PE> where speed makes a difference?  I would normally recommend you stick with
PE> 14400 unless you can cost-justify the increase.  BFN.  Paul. 

RJ> I'll be using Navigator for my "surfing" and any files
will be text type
RJ> files of indexes and date of hatches, matches and dispatches. 

What percentage of the time you spend online is waiting for a screen to be
drawn?  Any time spent thinking, or waiting for a response, is not going to
change.  In fact, a page drawn at 14400 is drawn faster than you can read
anyway.

RJ> Not usually more than a coupla hundred K bytes in compressed format.
RJ> I'll stick with the 14400 for a while and see how it goes. No need to fix
RJ> it if it ain't broke.

You can also add time taken for file transfers.  Do you compress the files
before sending them?  Do you do the file transfer in the background? If you
wait for them, then you are currently doing 2 minutes/day transfers, which
would be reduced to 1 minute.  How much does your ISP charge?  Mine is
5c/minute.  So if you save 5c per day for a year, then that comes to ~$20. 
If modems drop in price by more than $20 in the next year, you're better
off waiting a year, and then buying (actually, waiting a year and then
redoing the calculation :-)).  BFN.  Paul. 
@EOT:

---