Tretakoff Musings

Gentlemen, start your engines. As I blogged about before , if you want to know the speed of your web connection, SpeedTest has your back. But now, they have also introduced a new interface, making speed testing a downright participatory sport. Check out that interface to the left! But wait, there's more. Compare your results to those in the same state, or region, or with the same provider. Historical charts, averages of download and upload speeds, and the ability to customize how you prefer to have the information displayed to you. When you're done, you can post your results through HTML or email. Check out mine: Now how cool is THAT?

I'm the kinda guy who has LOTS of betas, bleeding edge programs, and other sundry things on his computer, looking for the next great thing. I'm also not necessarily one who associates reduced performance with those programs. Good example: the Tab Effect I recommended a few days ago : great idea, but really slows down Firefox's performance: I ended up jettisoning it. Not quite ready for prime time. However, I recently found out about other such programs, sapping not performance of my computer, but bandwidth. Remember when I mentioned about my aborted efforts to move to DSL? Well, my nephew Jeremy read that post, and IM'ed me this: Hey Josh...you know, Cnet's speed test is horribly inaccurate. Go retest with Speakeasy's. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I get (on average) 5.7 megs a second....6.1 or so on good nights. I'd stay with Comcast, I've only had a problem maybe 4-5 times in the 3-4 years we've had it, and the reviews on Yahoo and Verizon ...

Should I stay or should I go now? The quandary: I currently have Comcast for my broadband service; paying them about $60 a month. Speed, according to the CNet bandwidth measurement tool , is about 476.5 kbps. For my Phone service, I pay AT&T for their VOIP service about $30 a month: unlimited calls, great features. My router is starting to fail, so I'll get a new one, but it made me wonder: were there other providers that could do the job for me? Lo and behold, DSL has finally made it's way to my neighborhood. Looks like AT&T/Yahoo's system to determine if service is available at an address needs work. After a 45 minute chat online with a rep, she verified service is NOT available. Sigh. Read on for details for your research. AT&T/Yahoo will give me DSL that is 6 Mbps for about $40 ; 3 Mbps for $25 a month. Roughly half the cost of cable, and almost 10x the speed. Plus, they'll sweeten the pot with a $75 prepaid VISA. Potentially, I could save even more if I...