This week I have be stuck at home recovering from an operation last weekend. After the pain stopped, which was quite distraction, and I finished the web book I was reading, I've got rather bored waiting to be well enough to return to work.
Yesterday after a long fight with the Monster Telco my POTS line into the house became POTS+ADSL, I now have a nice shiny 512k feed into the house, instead of the somewhat anaemic 56k feed we use to have. I had the router already configured, and after a few minor checks it was up and running.
Remember: do not let a dyslexic person loose on IP configuration! It took quite a while to figure out why some machines could see the Internet and some could not, it does help if they are all set with the IP details in the right sequence, the right numbers in the wrong places, just don't work!!!!
I've now had a faster connection at home for about 24 hours, and I can't say that I'm impressed. I started to use the Internet a number of years ago on campus 10 and 100 MBit networks that were hooked up into SuperJANET, and since then worked on campus or company networks almost every day, so 512k-ADSL just doesn't feel that fast. My other problem is also that my home computers are now so old and underpowered, that they can't display the information any faster, so web pages don't feel much quicker than they did on dial-up. The only place it is noticeable is on raw downloads, I pulled the Debian ISO down quite quickly - it would have taken weeks on dial-up, now all I have to do is figure out why Easy CD Creator won't burn it to CD.
The other benefit of a router, is that I don't have to use one machine as a proxy for the others, so it's running a little faster, now a swathe of stuff isn't running on it anymore. The machine will also be a lot faster once I've upgraded it from Windows NT to Debian Linux, something I can do, now I'm not relying on it's stupid Winmodem.
Next year I will get a new computer, probably a shiny Mac of some sort. I don't know what yet, the G5 is very fast,and looks very cool, and the older PowerMacs seem fine, but not "discount" cheap enough yet. I may even get a PowerBook, but that is less likely. Either way I will be getting something new, the current kit is starting to show it's age, and it's getting difficult to interface it to newer kit.
