High speed help

ebolag4

ebolag4

Fundamentalist whack-job
I know this idea has already been hashed around some, but I wanted to see if anything new that I don't know about has developed.

I currently live in SC and will be moving to TX in a couple of months. I currently have cable internet and average 1.5 gigabit on my connection. We are building a house just north of Denton, TX, and there is no high-speed services available as of yet. The local cable/dsl companies don't come that far out of town yet.

What can I do? I don't want to return to 56k purgatory again. I want my high-speed.

What are my best options, if any, other than just be patient and wait? (read: that doesn't cost nearly as much as my monthly mortgage payment)

Thanks in advance everybody.
 
direct tv was supposed to be killing off their satelite access but i still see the commercials for it all the time. if they still have it, i don't see how you could go too wrong with satelite TV and internet.
 
Yeah, they're still in business, but they have shuffled it off to another company they now call DirecWay. They've even partnered with Earthlink I you want Earthlink specific service. I've gone to their website, and they say they are not currently Mac compatible. They said that using a PC as a server/router will be available in the near future, but is not supported at this time.

I looked at Dish Network, but they don't offer satellite internet. They have some kind of deal with Earthlink for DSL, which is not available where I'm moving.

I have a PC that I could probably figure out how to set up to share internet, but if they're saying it's not supported yet, should I still go for it?

Thanks, Ed, for the help.
 
generally what they mean by 'not supported' is "we have no idea how to use a mac and couldn't provide you any help if our life depended upon it".

simple way to get around this - buy a router, sounds like you could use one anyway if you also have a pc. when i first switched to os x, pacbell (now sbc), didn't 'support' anything but os 9. we bought a router and the router people helped me get set up in a 5 min phone call. it feels like i've been almost continuelsly connected ever since. no re-entering info, no typing in passwords, etc. - just open a web app and go. :)
 
Holy Cow!!!!!

I figured out how to do it. There is a DirecWay partner called OptiStreams that offers Mac compatibility, but you have to buy their special router (supposedly) to make it work.

The stinkin' thing costs $1700.

WHAT!!!

But, I'm thinking, surely I don't have to have one specific router. I think I'll go ahead and get DirecWay for my PC when I move, and then tinker around with it until I get it to work or not.

I read some stuff over on the MacCentral forums about using VPN between a Mac and a PC with DirecWay.

I'll figure it out I guess. Anyone with any further ideas, your help would be much appreciated.
 
Once you get it setup on your PC, put a second NIC card in it and use WinProxy to connect the Mac.
 
OK. We're talking a couple of months from now. I may have to come back and ask for some techie help.

Thanks.
 
We can't get DSL or cable here, but my Dad got ISDN for work. It won't be as fast as you are used to, but it isn't horribly slow either. Something to concider. :)
 
Sorry, but ISDN is horribly slow by my standards. I'm not going to pay more for something that hardly gives me a speed boost over dial-up. Besides, I don't want to ever visit ISDN hell again. Even if it's improved since its early days, I don't want anything to do with it. The returns just don't justify the effort. Satellite, however, should bring a good return on my time investment.
 
Hey, here's a new thought. Is it possible to connect my desktop G4 to the net through a web-enabled cell phone? If so, how might I go about doing that, and what kind of speeds are possible?
 
Originally posted by ebolag4
Hey, here's a new thought. Is it possible to connect my desktop G4 to the net through a web-enabled cell phone? If so, how might I go about doing that, and what kind of speeds are possible?
Click to expand...

between 9.6 and 19.2 kbps, and would cost many times more than dialup ;)
3G should be faster I think, up to a megabit or two per second for some networks, but it's pay-per-download and not exactly cheap.

But what about moving close to a university? They ususally have pretty fast connections, so maybe you could make a deal with an IT admin? ;)
 
I don't have much choice as to where I'm moving due to a lot of reasons.

I spoke with a representative from OptiStreams, which is the only company that works with DirecWay that supports Macintosh. Their service is $99 per month, and you have to buy/lease a router which costs $1700! They say that this is the ONLY router that will work with both the DirecWay system and Macs.

ARRGGGHHHH! I'm about to pull my hair out. It looks like I'm going back to dial-up for at least a year. Just shoot me now!
 
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