Sylinde Bren said:
Out of curiousity, I'm very much interested to know what you feel the downsides to cable and the upsides to dial-up are...?
The only upside of Dial-up that I can think of is the low price.
Cable and DSL are great when hooked directly to the computer.
Cable speeds supposedly can slow down based on the number of people connected to the line in your neighborhood at any one time. But I've never seen anyone complain about this.
DSL on the other hand has a fairly constant speed regardless of how many people are on the line. What slows down DSL is the distance you are from the phone company's central relay office.
If you are on cable/DSL and use a wireless router to your notebook computer, your wireless connection supposedly will be a touch slower then being connected directly. But cable speeds are so fast even when connected wireless, the slow down is almost unnoticeable.
If you use a wireless router and your signal isn't encrypted, people driving by your home (or neighbors) can tap into your wireless signal.
I don't know how it's done but I know of people that can spy on your hard drive contents by tapping into your wireless connection if you don't have your wireless connection encrypted.