Satelite internet?

[rumbl3]

I always see a company on tv advertise high speed satelite internet etc etc.
Just wondering if it's actually high speed or lol more like dial up?

I always heard horrible things about satelite but wasn't sure it that was just a bad taste from years ago or if it's still crap?


Just curious

[CGR]

If you have no other options then it is usually better than dialup..

[DirtSandwich]

It's kind of like ISDN. It's slightly better than dialup and it's crazy expensive when compared to DSL or cable.

[burningcpu]

Isn't the big issue with satellite internet the latency?

[DirtSandwich]

Isn't the big issue with satellite internet the latency?

it can be.

[jivetrky]

If you have no other options for a faster than dialup connection, then Sat isn't bad. It's not super fast, but faster than Dialup. The latency isn't that great, so for things like gaming, it's less than ideal. But for most normal use, it's not bad.

But definitely go for other options if they are available to you, as they are likely cheaper, faster, and more reliable.

[GTFouts]

You want to stay away from this unless you have no other choice IMHO. I have this and have had it for many years. I totally hate it. There are many things they dont tell you.

1. You have to buy the dish and modem and that will set you back around $650, or was when I got it.

2. You have to pay someone to come install the dish and modem, they do not allow you to do it yourself. Then you have to hope whoever it is will spend the few minutes getting you the best signal possible for your area. This seems to irratate them and they dont want to do this because that will waste 10 min....sad.

3. Medium to heavy clouds will normally mess it up. Raining, you can almost forget it, usually.

4. First, you have to hope the dload will start. If it does, then you hope it will finish, 50-50 chance there.

5. You are only allowed to dload 175 MB a day, PERIOD! It dloads at 100/sec, most of the time, never faster. If you reach 175, then it drops to 3 - 8 per sec. You might as well turn to PC off and forget it. If you have a file larger than that, well....You loose....sort-of.

6. There is unlimited dloading from 3am to 6am which does not count towards your total for the day.

7. Your total for the day does not reset at midnight or whatever. It SLOWLY declines over a 24 hour period from the time you hit max.

8. You can surf the net faster with dialup than with this, seriously. Most pages take many minutes to load, if they finish at all.

9. The latency is ridiculous and very sporadic. sometimes only a few seconds, sometimes minutes. Forget about online gaming if thats your thing. It's impossible with this.

10. Your surfing and, well, everything, counts towards your daily 175MB.

11. Half the time you have to reclick on links many times to get it to recognize that you want to go there.

12. It will cost you $60.00 a month for all this punishment, $65.00 a month if you want a bill sent to you in the mail.

As you can see, it is not all that they try to make you believe it is, not in the least bit. And over time you will grow to Despise it, I know I sure have. Unfortunately, I have no other options where I live except dialup. And it does dload faster than that when it works properly. The choice is yours.