Today the cable guys came by and installed the cable modem as well as switching my phone service over to Starpower from Verizon (definitely no DSL line for me now, until I decide to switch back). The condo we own was built in the 1950s and has these concrete walls (okay, actually they are wire mesh with concrete plastered into the mesh--it's hard to explain...) so they had some fun trying to simply get the cabling through from the hallway outside. In the apartment, they have to snake the wiring on the outside of the wall. Good thing I've got lots of bookshelves to hide cabling behind.

The connection of the phone service proved troublesome, too, because we have this internal phone line down to the front desk (hmm, I just realized that I didn't test to see if that still worked...uh oh). I notice a slight buzz in the phone service now, but it's better than the dropping out of the voice I get with the "clear" (coff coff) digital service of Sprint PCS.

As for the speed of the cable modem...there is a slight difference, especially with some sites like Google. With others, its still slow. And Jill discovered something that I hadn't thought of when she went to send an email with her Earthlink account last night--the smtp service refused to send because she wasn't on an Earthlink IP. Doh! Guess I need to get her email switched over before she gets back from this latest trip.

I'm giving the Starpower service a month before I make any conclusions on whether it's worth the increased cost.