Sparky Catches up with the 21st Century!

Sparky-Watts · #1 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:08 PM

That's right, folks. Sparky done gone hi-tech!

I got hooked up with high-speed internet tonight! WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!!!! It's a wireless service called Pixius. No, it's not satellite, either. It works under the Motorola "Umbrella" System via radio transmission from a local tower to a receiver on the roof. Fortunately for me, the tower is less than a mile from my house, so I'm hitting 100% on all the diagnostic tests. Download speed is 768 kbps, upload is 384 kbps. No more waiting 10 minutes to open a page on Jeepz. Seriously, these pages without any extra pictures would take almost 5 minutes to load with just the avatars and sig pics on my old dial-up. For instance, the thread I started about the Barton Solvents fire, with all the pics I loaded on that page, would take a full 10 minutes to completely load. Now it loads in about 3 seconds. I freakin' love it!!!

KrazyJeeper · #2 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:12 PM

Now if we could at least get you to buy a real Jeep. You know, one with round headlights. LOL

Sparky-Watts · #3 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrazyJeeper

Now if we could at least get you to buy a real Jeep. You know, one with round headlights. LOL

Oh, now you're just being mean.

dandoc · #4 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:21 PM

Congrats, Sparky! Now your internet surfing will go about as fast as a twister!

Red Neckerson · #5 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:38 PM

Now your REALLY making me feel like a hick! I have dial up internet service and a plain old TV antenna on the roof top!!!!

AND
we live in a 120 year old farm house. I love the house but satellite and high speed internet would be nice! Congrats and enjoy!

Red Neckerson · #6 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrazyJeeper

Now if we could at least get you to buy a real Jeep. You know, one with round headlights. LOL

Sparky-Watts · #7 (**permalink**) 07-19-2007, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dandoc

Congrats, Sparky! Now your internet surfing will go about as fast as a twister!

Well, now I'll finally be able to take a shower more than once a week since I'll have more time. 90% of my time in the mornings was spent waiting for web pages to load, 7% was spent reading said web pages, and 3% was spent downloading the previous day's food intake.

southtj · #8 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 06:48 AM

Welcome to the high speed world. Now when you upgrade to a cable based internet those numbers would be mbps instead of measly kbps. And if you got rid of that annoyingly long sig pic it would load even faster. Seriously.

Sparky-Watts · #9 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by southtj

Welcome to the high speed world. Now when you upgrade to a cable based internet those numbers would be mbps instead of measly kbps. And if you got rid of that annoyingly long sig pic it would load even faster. Seriously.

My mistake....it is mbps, not kbps. It's actually twice as fast as DSL and nearly 5 times as fast as cable.

TwistedCopper · #10 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 08:10 AM

That's pretty respectable speed for wireless. I'm on high speed cable (no DSL here), anxiously awaiting FIOS service from Verizon. As soon as the fiber optics show up on my road I'm going FIOS and surfing at the speed of light.

Congrats Sparky... now if you would just upgrade from that outhouse/sears catalog combo and get yourself running water you'd really be keeping up with the times

Sparky-Watts · #11 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 08:12 AM

Actually, I just tested it at an internet speed calculator site, and it was 2344 Kb/s. Beats the heck out of the old 49.2 Kb/s with dial up, huh?

Here's the site I used: PC Pitstop

Sparky-Watts · #12 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Neckerson

Now your REALLY making me feel like a hick! I have dial up internet service and a plain old TV antenna on the roof top!!!!

AND
we live in a 120 year old farm house. I love the house but satellite and high speed internet would be nice! Congrats and enjoy!

Check out Pixius, they probably have service in your area, too.

Sparky-Watts · #13 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwistedCopper

That's pretty respectable speed for wireless. I'm on high speed cable (no DSL here), anxiously awaiting FIOS service from Verizon. As soon as the fiber optics show up on my road I'm going FIOS and surfing at the speed of light.

Congrats Sparky... now if you would just upgrade from that outhouse/sears catalog combo and get yourself running water you'd really be keeping up with the times

Yeah, you want a fast fiber optics connection? Check this out: Swedish Woman Gets Highspeed Internet

Quote:

Swedish woman gets superfast Internet
The Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer - many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.

Jonsson and Lothberg's son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.

The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.

"We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed," he said.

Peter Lothberg, who is a networking expert, said he wanted to demonstrate the new technology while providing a computer link for his mother.

"She's a brand-new Internet user," Lothberg said by phone from California, where he lives. "She didn't even have a computer before."

His mother isn't exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers.

40 Gigs per second?!? Holy cow!!!

Red Neckerson · #14 (**permalink**) 07-20-2007, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparky-Watts

Check out Pixius, they probably have service in your area, too.

It looks like their service is to far southwest and southeast. According to the map we are not very close at all. But thanks for the link. The house we currently live in, we rent so we probably won't do to much until we get our own.

90Xjay · #15 (**permalink**) 07-21-2007, 09:26 PM

I've had cable for about 7 years, and it is fast alright and expensive.
I wouldn't keep it except that I get to write it off on taxes for my home office

Sparky-Watts · #16 (**permalink**) 07-21-2007, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 90Xjay

I've had cable for about 7 years, and it is fast alright and expensive.
I wouldn't keep it except that I get to write it off on taxes for my home office

Dial up was $21.95. Wireless in $45. Telephone to support dial up is $75. Drop the dial up and the telephone (just using cell phones now) and we're saving $50 a month. And before you say it, no we won't be spending more on cell bills. We very rarely make calls on the landline anyway, and actually very seldom make calls outside our Sprint service on the cells, so the majority of those calls are free. My work uses Sprint, so that's no problem either with burning minutes of talk time. Money in the bank, as I see it.

90Xjay · #17 (**permalink**) 07-21-2007, 10:04 PM

I know alot of people dropping land lines and going cell phone as their only phone.

I won't at least for now because I'll always need at least one land line for a fax machine.

Sparky-Watts · #18 (**permalink**) 07-22-2007, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 90Xjay

I know alot of people dropping land lines and going cell phone as their only phone.

I won't at least for now because I'll always need at least one land line for a fax machine.

Yeah, my oldest brother did it years ago. Most of my friends in Wichita have already dropped their landlines, too.

I don't have a fax machine, never saw the need. I'm guessing you have yours as part of your job? If I need to send a fax (which is very, very rarely), I can do it at work, or at the city hall here in town.

Saurian · #19 (**permalink**) 07-22-2007, 09:48 AM

Congrats... I hate to say it, but I've become a slave to the high-speed internet monster... I hate working on my Grandma's computer, she's on dial-up, it totally suits her needs, but it's horrible when I'm trying to download updates and stuff from my server over a VPN, or just the internet in general...

I knew I was going to go cable, also wanted a home phone so I wouldn't miss any overtime calls due to spotty cell phone reception (thank you new AT&T), and cable TV (more for the roomies than everything)... As luck would have it, WideOpenWest was going door-to-door, it was cheaper if I got all three services bundled together, so I'm back online, with a broadband home phone, the digital cable, and the DVR... Gotta love that high speed internet...

Our entire county is being blanketed with free wireless internet too... Wireless Oakland is set to be fully operational in my area by 2008, at a speed of 128 kbps, about twice that of standard dialup...