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
RJ> with EC would be a whole lot quicker than 14400.

PE> The OS link is often very slow (haven't you noticed that?).

You are comprehensively mangling the story on the 'OS link'

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

Not necessarily, particularly when some sites are a lot
slower than others at the same time, it cant be 'the OS link'

And if you do get some at the speed of the 14400
modem, then a faster modem will see you get them faster.

PE> probably only see a speed improvement if you
PE> are transferring a file to/from your local ISP.

Thats complete crap too, there is just the tiny matter of transfers
from other than your local ISP that go at the full speed of the
modem with a 14400 modem and twice as fast with a 28800 modem.

PE> What is the *exact* application you are using where speed
PE> makes a difference?  I would normally recommend you stick
PE> with 14400 unless you can cost-justify the increase.

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

PE> What percentage of the time you spend online is waiting
PE> for a screen to be drawn?  Any time spent thinking,
PE> or waiting for a response, is not going to change.

Most people dont spend all that much time thinking when surfing.

PE> In fact, a page drawn at 14400 is drawn faster than you can read anyway.

Thats complete crap too, most obviously with pages with
graphics on them and they are almost all like that now.

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

PE> You can also add time taken for file transfers.
PE> Do you compress the files before sending them?

You dont normally have any choice, you get stuck with what
format they have chosen to use whether you like it or not.

And even with say a file attach to an email, even if its a fully compressed
ZIP, it aint necessarily anything like that in the traffic thru the modem.

PE> Do you do the file transfer in the background?

Thats automatic with Netscape. And that particular situation with a
14400 modem sees a significant deterioration in the rate at which you can
surf off on other pages with that transfer doing on in the background too
with a site than can deliver the transfer at a decent speed.

PE> If you wait for them, then you are currently doing
PE> 2 minutes/day transfers, which would be reduced to
PE> 1 minute. How much does your ISP charge?  Mine is 5c/minute.

Sure, you can certainly make a case that the economics dont add up.
But thats an entirely separate issue to the irritation factor with
a modem that costs less than $200. You are starting to get to the
money that plenty are prepared to pay to lower the irritation level.

And there are plenty of ISPs with $1/hour class costs too.
Or unlimited which completely fucks the economic argument.

PE> So if you save 5c per day for a year, then that comes
PE> to ~$20.  If modems drop in price by more than $20 in the
PE> next year, you're better off waiting a year, and then buying
PE> (actually, waiting a year and then redoing the calculation :-)).

And you do plenty of things for other than pure cost
reasons, like two local calls a day for mail for example.
@EOT:

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