On (21 Nov 95) Bill Grimsley wrote to Keith Richardson...



 BG> It ain't FRZry any more - the USR Courier really is a superior

 BG> modem at this point in time.  Undeniably observed fact.  Seems you

 BG> DO get what you pay for.



KR> i dont know that i really get all this modem stuff. 



 BG> That's obvious.  :)



well, if it produces the results that i see in modems, ignorance must be

bliss (:



 KR> i've got the cheapest 144fm that i ever saw (thats why i bought

 KR> it), it has a rockwell chipset, and that seems to be considered by

 KR> the experts as low as you can go, but i cant remember the last

 KR> time that i had a failed connect, and the transfer rates seem as

 KR> good as any. i dont use interstate connections much, but i have

 KR> done modem and fax connects to the us with no problem.



 BG> Sure, but once you make the jump to V.34 or V.34+, the equation changes

 BG> quite dramatically, as that's basically approaching on the upper frequency

 BG> limit of our analogue phone lines.  Indeed, apart from the earlier S2s

 BG> (and series 3 Netcomms), the vast majority of 14k4 modems worked just

 BG> fine, Rockwell-based or otherwise.  Not so with the current crop of V.34s

 BG> though.



i dont remember that being the story before v 34 came out.



 KR> we use the same maestros (at 2400 synchronous) for the mainframes

 KR> to dial home to the us, again without problem other than a higher

 KR> than usual fallout rate (approx 15% have died in 3.5 years).



 BG> 2400 bps is not a fair test at all.  You can achieve that on the

 BG> proverbial wet piece of string...  :)



why do you think that it is done that way? when a mainframe goes belly

up, you dont want line problems stopping the story getting out.

seriously, in my experience, some of the worst comms problems this side

of albania are in the us, and even 2400 can be a problem to get through

to there.



 KR> all in all, we have about 40 rockwell modems, and we could not ask

 KR> much more out of them.



 BG> As they're all 14k4s, I'm not at all surprised.  When (and if) you

 BG> eventually upgrade to V.34s though, you'll be in for a very nasty

 BG> surprise, I promise you.



i see no compelling reasons to move up either personally or

professionally, it takes a hell of a lot more data than i shift to pay

for v 34. even then there are other solutions, we use tymnet a lot, you

pay by the packet, not by time, so the speed of the connection is

irrelevent, financially.



KR> so, if i have $600 i'll put it toward another 16 meg of memory, much

KR> better value imho (:



 BG> Sure, no argument with that at all.  I've not long ago done the same

 BG> thing, and doesn't OS/2 now scream along with 32Mb of RAM!  :)



i was thinking more of photoshop, with a 400 dpi scan 128k would be

useful as would a power-mac. (:



                        Keith



ps try win-95, it runs really well in 16 megs (:





... Windows secret: Add MaxGPFs=0 to your system.ini



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