Anyone have DSL and prefer it over cable modem? Thinking of getting DSL as AOL is pissing me off. Don't know if I have an Ethernet card or not though, hopefully they are not too expensive. Anyone keep AOL at the 9.95 plan when they got cable or DSL? Family likes the idea of keeping thier email addresses.

I don't really see the diferences in speeds between cable and DSL on the download side. However, uploading is like night and day. Since I started building a webpage, uploading say a 1.5MG page on cable take about 15-20min. On DSL its about 2min. maybe less.

Both services are pretty much reliable in my experience.

I've got DSL service and love it. Had cable but for the same reasons LT pointed out, uploading speeds suffered and I bailed on it. Cable users in your neighborhood use the same line, slowing things down quite a bit when everyones on, typically afternoon and evenings, when most people are on. I also "had" AOL at the $9.95 price tag for awhile but actually just cancelled them a few days ago, too many problems. I always liked AOL's email service but cest la vie, just too many damn problems with the software. Once you start doing stuff with DSL, it'll be hard to go back.

Depends on the DSL service. Some are barely worth the price but if that's all that's available....

My cable service, when it was handled by Excite, capped my upload at 125 but allowed download speeds approaching 3000. Now that AT&T is handling it, I'm still capped at 125 upstream but my downstream data never exceeds one meg.

The general rule on DSL is that it's less susceptible to traffic and has more consistent speeds than cable but has a lower potential top end (on the downloads).

I know playing games online, a lot more guys with cable bitch about packet loss compared to the Dsl guys.

I think it all depends on where you are and who the providers are.  I have AT cable(formaly mediaone) and love it.  I get 1.5 mb down aand 384k up for $40 a month.  I run webservers, mail servers, DNS and the like on it with a very rare hitch.  

I also have experience setting up DSL.  I did a complete NOC for a local DSL provider and they have yet to convince me to switch over.  The prices are outrageous for the performance(compared to cable) and it's not all roses for connectivity.  Several guys at work switch from DSL as soon as cable was availabe, due to the headaches they had with DSL.

I might add that I also run a UT server on my cable line and I'm always getting compliments as to how fast the connection is, and that's through a masqueraded firewall.

Knowing which city and state you are in would help get you some local experiences.  IMHO it depends very much on what your local DSL provider is like;  some suck, some are just fine.

In Seattle, with USWest DSL connected to a non-USWest ISP, it's been fine.  In three years I've had four outages that lasted longer than a few minutes, and only a couple dozen short ones.

As far as keeping your old email address, it's pretty much a nonissue.  Maybe keep them for a few months, but the people you actually want emailing you will figure it out pretty fast, and you get to leave all the spam behind.

A good ethernet card is at most $40, probably $25 or so mail-order.  Last time I was in the market, the Intel EtherPro 100 was the one to get.