Does anyone used Direct PC or Direct Duo for high speed downloads for their PC?  Is it any good?  I was looking at ads on AOL and it look interesting.  How much more does it add to the cost of your Direct TV service?

Thanks,
Tom

I install them for a living, but don't have one myself....what does that tell you? Seriously, if its your only option (no cable, DSL, etc) then the AOL one way system is the way to go. The two way system offered by Hughes, Pegasus, Earthlink and others is just plain broke at the moment, and they won't admit it. Feel free to ICQ me if you want some more in depth info.
18693977

I was looking into getting something like this. DSL and cable aren't available since I live in the back woods. What kind of speeds can you get?

With AOL one way, normal download speeds are between 400 and 650 kps, sometimes going higher, depending on users online at the time. Uploads are limmited to your regular modem, so 36 kps is about normal. Duffy is dead on about the ping times....they suck. Surfing you won't notice. Gaming and conferencing will not work very well at all.

Well screw that. Looks to me like just another ploy to make money.

I was looking at this 'cause I hate my cable company, and the DSL provider here is not much better.  Lag is a big problem and that took it out of the running cause I like online gaming.

Has anyone seen the Sprint microwave broadband?  Does it have the same lag issues?  I get emails about it every once in a while.  You have to put a microwave dish on your house but they claim it to be as fast as cable.  Anyone?

I just saw the Sprint broadband.
[url]http://www.sprint.com/broadband/index.html?refurl=uhp_personal_highspeedinternet[/url]

It wasn't that bad. Better than DSL, almost equal to cable (from what I could tell). Roughly the same price ($50 / month in my area).

The only draw back is the "line of sight". If you don't have the line of sight to the POP, your screwed.

But I am looking at it for an alternative in case my cable pisses me off. Which is getting close, I am stuck on a Hybrid-Cable Modem (Cable down stream, phone up stream) untill they upgrade my area. But it is still better than DSL.

BTW, can you tell that I hate DSL? It is just to expensive for what you get. Think about it, you have to pay for leasing the DSL connection AND your ISP (they never really tell you about the ISP charges till after you sign up). Add those together then divide by your average connection speed = price per bits (i.e. your bang per buck). Compare that to Cable you might be suprise what you get.

I have sprint broadband and earthlink they are tied in together. the only complaint I have is their service center even if it is 24hours it sucks. it is run by the church of scientology. and that should tell you something.
this was about my only choice and when it works and thats 99.9% of the time its hard to beat. its on all the time so when you turn on your cpu and log into your cpu its on.
have not played any games on it other than yahoo so can not tell you much about that. but I'am happy with it.

As I live in an area that has neither cable modem or DSL service, I looked into the DirectDUO/DirecrPC option. As I browsed all the info, it appears you still need to have a local dialup access number (at least for the DirecPC/Duo) and those are limited to major metropolitan areas. Hollywood, or anyone else for that matter, can this be confirmed or refuted? Is there any satellite access option that does not require a local dialup access number to use?

yes, I have Starband 2 way interent access over the satellite.  It is price startup (about 600) it took them awhile to get the bugs out, but it is acceptable.  It is the only high speed option that I have.

Steve

DJbump...Like SCR1 said, Starband is available as a two-way solution, and DirecPC has a two-way system as well. DirecPC two-way pricing is around $800 installed, $69 a month for service. I install these weekly, but never try to sell them to anyone because the downtime is considerable while they work out the bugs. Like most other computer related things they decided to use paying customers as beta testers. While I don't normally do Starband, I employ a guy to do those and he reports that it is a bit better than DirecPC at this time.