Rich's Ramblings for July 1998©, printed in the July 1998 edition of the Capital PC User Group, Inc magazine MONITOR
OK, here goes, I bit when the Montgomery Cable called me with the information about their new Cable Modem service. It costs $24.95 for a 10 hours a month use and is supposed to give you fantastic INTERNET file transfer speeds. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! I figured that I would test it out and I can report that it went pretty smooth. I did not opt for them sending out a technician to install the Cable TV connection to my computer room but I figured that I could pick up the parts and do it myself. Real Easy, I had a drop from the CATV as I had been testing a device to allow me to watch Seinfeld on my computer, while I was downloading my mail.
What was explained to me for normal users is that they sell you an Ethernet card if you don't have one and then provide a COM21 cable modem. All cables and connectors are included along with the easy instructions on how to install it all. The easiest part about the installation was the cable modems connection to my existing Ethernet Hub. I run Windows NT server and Novell 3.12 on my network at home and did not want to corrupt that part. The Cable Modem did not interfere at all with my existing network. Installing a network board on most people's machines should be pretty easy. Then, plugging the Ethernet cable into the cable modem, power and the CATV cable to the modem. One thing is that you will still need a phone line as the cable modem is only one way, down to you from the net.
PS: Montgomery Cable and Arlington Cable are evidently owned by the same people.
Once you have setup a Dial Up Networking icon and added MS networking and TCP/IP protocol to your control panel networks feature, it goes quite smoothly. The simple directions provided with the Cable modem are very clear. I think that even a non-techi could do it. I set the paperwork up on Friday the 15th of May and picked up the hardware that evening from their offices near the intersection of Gude & RT355. It did have a problem because the paperwork for my userid and such did not get to the people who set them up on the computer. MCTV is an Internet Services Provider (ISP) so you end up with another userid. I can receive mail and read news via their server. I had a small problem with my userid as for some reason someone left off on of the N's in my name but once that was solved, things went well.
I am getting about 3,000,000 bytes on file transfers. I downloaded the new MS Internet Explorer which is about 16.5 megabytes and it only took 5 minutes. Whew!. Now to get a larger hard disk to store all this data.
What happens: You connect to their ISP server just like you would to CPCUG.ORG or EROLS.COM. You log in and establish a standard dynamic IP connection. You can run any of the INTERNET clients such as Netscape, INTERNET Explorer or Eudora Email. The big difference is that most of the received data comes thru the Cable Modem instead of your regular modem. So you effectively have two connections to the INTERNET, one being your regular modem and the other being a one way (down to you) of the Cable Modem to your ethernet card.
I think I will keep it, at least for a while. I do not recommend this for many of you who are just getting on to read your email or browse a few web pages. Even though the web pages do come across real fast, it is not cheap. And I know that the 10 hours will go fast this month. For around $65 you can have unlimited service. This will only be for the big timers. I have other ISP accounts so I would probably only use the Cable modem when I knew I had to receive large files.
Requirements. At least a Pentium 100 with 16 megabytes of RAM, already have CATV service and a modem and phone line. If you want to try it, give them a call at (301) 424-4400. I will say that the technical support person I talked to (Bryan) was very helpful and even though their technical support office is in Fairfax VA, he ended up dropping by the ISP server room in Rockville MD to double check my Userid, which is where he found the lost N in my userid. All in all a very easy install and they are knowledgeable and helpful. They will send a technician out to install everything for around $150, if you wish.
Added Later: I had to return the Cable modem and stop the service as I decided to upgrade my home network to the newer and faster 100BaseT system. The Cable modem only works on a 10BaseT network. So there goes my fast internet connection. Guess that my V.Everything modems with the V.90 upgrades will be it for a while. The ISDN line is faster but more expensive.
Backing up:
Backing up: A curse on Microsoft Office and it's MS Fast Find program. I was wondering why I kept seeing my A drive light come on intermittently, It was that program Fast Find which was installed with MS Office 97 Pro. It constantly keeps a data file index alive on what files have changed and such on your hard disk. It also was messing up my backup as these index files would change between the backup and verify stages of backing up. Of course, these were errors which I could not figure out what was happening. Removing the MS Fast Find from the startup folder solved that problem.
For those of you who have been around for a while I have a story to tell. Back in 1990, I wrote an April Fools article about a non existent program by Vern Buerg. Vern is the author of the DOS program called LIST and other fine software. It was/is very popular, for many years, back before windows was a gleam in Bill Gates's eye. My Monitor article was a spoof on a new compression algorithm called GREB, I have a copy of my article on my web page at http://www.cpcug.org/user/schinnel if you are interested in reading it. But the gist of all this, is that the Melbourne PC User group magazine asked if they could run it in their April 1998 issue. I of course was flattered and agreed. Again as in 1990 I was flooded with inquiries as were the Editors and Vern Buerg. Many people continue to believe that a huge document can be compressed down to a 8.3 file name in a directory. I had lots of laughs and hope that my laughing did not embarrass those who called me long distance to ask about it.
I visited Vern and Julie Buerg when I went to San Francisco the first week in May. They live in Petaluma California, right in the middle of wine country. They were very gracious hosts and I had a great time.
There are certain advantages to growing older and one is the cheap air fares. Now that I have reached 62, besides being eligible for Social Security I am eligible for special senior rates on the air lines. I belong to American Airlines Advantage and they have a plan where you purchase 4 coupons for $598.00 which can be used any time. There are no restrictions on time of year or otherwise. I fly to Seattle about twice a year to visit my Father in Puyallup WA and also go to Las Vegas for COMDEX each year. So I ended up paying about $300 per round trip which is a pretty good fare considering that the cheapest that I could find for the Seattle trip was around $540. For the times I wanted to travel. There are cheap fares but I don't like Red-Eye flights. If you want to fly to Hawaii, that takes all four coupons for a RT fare to Hawaii of less than $600. Of course there are always bargains. And it always pays to shop around. Your mileage may vary.
Rich Schinnell was the first Vice President of CPCUG and a member since day one. He enjoys helping members on the Help line, which can be quite challenging at times. Please BACKUP. He also does some small business consulting and can be found around the CPCUG offices trying to keep the office staff in line. He can be reached in the evening from 6-9PM for assistance at (301) 949-9292. Email at schinnel@cpcug.org and his world wide web page is at http://www.cpcug.org/user/schinnel
This article is copyrighted by CPCUG and Rich Schinnell, permission to copy is granted to other non-profit user groups, all other uses require permission
of the author. July 1998.