J. A. Powell, Jr.
I've got great news!!! Long after Atlanta, Athens, Columbus, Augusta, we are about to get DSL ... (sound of crickets chirping) ... say you don't know what I am talking about? DSL is cheap high speed internet access. Finally, we will not have to wait for web pages to load. Finally, we will not have to pay a fortune for fast internet access. Finally, we don't have to listen to that horrible screeching that a dial up modem makes.
How fast you ask? A dial up modem can hit speeds of about 52K bps. (I know, I know, your modem says that it is a 56K modem. It may be, but the phone company will only allow it to go to 52K.) If you have an ISDN connection, you can cruise along at 128K. With DSL, you can connect at a blistering 1,500K. In layman's terms, that file that took an entire hour to download with a dial up connection can be downloaded in two minutes with DSL.
The phone company uses the same telephone lines for DSL that are used for telephone service. DSL uses the frequencies that are not needed for voice communications. As weird as it may sound, you can be surfing the internet and talk on the phone at the same time using only one telephone line. DSL is always on, just like your TV cable.
DSL is an abbreviation for "digital subscriber line." There are many versions of DSL, the two main versions are ADSL and SDSL. ADSL is the asynchronous digital subscriber line. That means that the upload and the download speeds are different. The download speed, the speed that a file is downloaded from the Internet to your computer is 1,500K. The upload speed, the speed that a file is uploaded from your computer to the Internet is typically about 256K. SDSL is the synchronous digital subscriber line. That means that the speeds for uploading and downloading are the same.
Which should you get? If you send large files to others on the Internet, get the SDSL. If you primarily surf the web get ASDL because you send very little information and don't need high upload speeds.
The down side to DSL is that it has a range limited to about 3 miles from the "switch." The switch is the building that holds the computers and switching devices that the phone company uses to route calls. I know of three switches in Macon. There may be more. The downtown switch is on Cherry street. The North Macon switch is on Forsyth Road at Park Street. The South Macon switch is off of Houston Ave.
The best part of DSL is that it is cheap. BellSouth's web page shows that the price for residential DSL is $40 per month. The price for business DSL is $60. There is a company that is reselling the DSL service at very high prices. BellSouth's service is supposed to be ready by November. I suggest that you not sign up with anyone until BellSouth makes their announcement.
If you want more information go to: https://fast1.corp.bellsouth.net/adsl.
Yesterday, I took home two entire filing cabinets of files. Yep. I just picked them up with one hand and walked out the door. It did help that the documents had been scanned and burned onto two CDs.
We are now scanning all of our closed files and copying them to CDs to take home. The scanned documents remain on our servers at the office for fast access and the CDs are for backup purposes.
We recently needed two old files pulled. One was scanned but not in the correct folder. I did a search using my computer and found it in less than 1 minute. The other predated our scanning and was not in the correct box. It took several days to find that file.
Last March, I switched my laptop to Windows 2000. Believe it or now, I have not had a single crash of my computer since then. If you are experiencing frequent crashes with Windows 95/98 you may want to consider changing over to Win2000.
In my next column, I plan on reporting on the Linux operating system. I would like to hear from anyone that is using Linux to see how you like it.