Stephen Rice, Champion
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Posted 10 months ago
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Today:
What is going on???![]()
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Tonight, Viasat: 1.5 Mbps down, I've only used 12 G of my 150, too bad it is so pitiful in the evening.
But on a brighter note, the power company came out yesterday and marked the under ground FIOS cable path to my home. Today they had a couple of crews stringing the FIOS cable from one pole to the next on the state roads and to the last pole on my lane. (the rest will be underground, because i have an underground power line as well, after the last pole they will run the underground for 1000 feet free. To the pole was free, and since i am 998 feet from that pole the installation is free.)
So probably in 6 to 8 weeks, or sooner we should be on FIOS.
This service was never expected, the Broad Band initiative and the heads up work by our rural power company is making this a reality.
My so called 150G Silver 25 Mbps plan yields reasonable speeds during the day time hours, but as you all know after 5 PM it is ridiculously slow.
I am opting for the 2nd tier FIOS, 100 Mbps, unlimited data for 100 dollars a month.
They have a 50 Mbps, unlimited data for 74 dollars and the 1GB speed plan is 179 dollars a month.
Most Dish and Directv subscribers are cancelling and just doing the a la cart streaming, I'll see the performance before cancelling our Directv..
I hope some of your counties, power companies get with the program.
GabeU, Champion
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Steve Frederick-VS1/Beam314, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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For most of the 80's, I used Atari computers, both the 800 and the ST. They were good for gaming, which I did a LOT back then. Never had a modem where you placed the phone handset on, and never had the cassette loader. They were still available, but going out when I got my first computer.
Stephen Rice, Champion
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I’ll never forget the words that were displayed during POST every time you would power up the machine,
“America grew up listening to us, it still does.”
GabeU, Champion
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I bought my own first computer in either 1998 or 1999. It was an eMachines 366i. A 366Mhz Celeron with 32MB RAM and a 4.3GB HDD. It was actually a very good computer. I got it on the cheap with the $400 instant rebate for signing up for three years of MSN dialup, which I would have needed, anyway. So, it was like getting $400 off for doing nothing.
And, a sliver lining to choosing that computer is that, years later, there was a class action suit against eMachines that had to do with the floppy drives used on their computers, with the 366i included. Darn near every model with a floppy drive was included. You could choose a $62.50 check or $365 worth of computer related merchandise from this site they set up. I chose the latter and ended up getting my Acer Aspire V5-122P-0889. It was refurbished, but you wouldn't know it. Granted, it's a slow computer, but for free? Heck yeah! I do wish I would have not been so impatient and had waited a day or two for a better model to be listed, but oh well. Again, it was free, so what do I care? LOL.
It sure does pay to register your products. :)
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Maybe a 366Mhz Pentium?
Stephen Rice, Champion
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First, TI keyboard type with cartridge slot. Second, Packard Bell from Sears, 40MB hard drive, I think a 286, 12 MHz. Third, Gateway p120, I think 16mb ram. Fourth, Dell p4 1.8 with 512mb rdram. 5, 6, 7 self assembled.
Stephen Rice, Champion
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It wasn’t difficult to take a 300 MHz processor and overlock it to 450 MHz. All you had to do was go in the BIOS and change the bus speed from 66 MHz to 100 MHz. Of course, your SDRAM had to be PC100 for it to work.
It was a very nice trade off for the lack of cache on the early processors.
Those were the days back when technology was still fun. Now we take for granted the disposable super computers that fit in our pockets.
GabeU, Champion
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"A 366Mhz Celeron " ??? Maybe a 366Mhz Pentium?Nope. It was definitely a Celeron. It worked very well for the time.
GabeU, Champion
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Now we take for granted the disposable super computers that fit in our pockets.Pretty much. Heck, my Raspberry Pi outperforms that eMachines by leaps and bounds, and it costs $35, plus the micro sd card, which is nearly four times the capacity and so much faster. :)
Stephen Rice, Champion
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By that time, all Celerons had integrated cache as well.
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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Brad, Viasat Employee
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Imagine losing your internet today after 2 hours. Lol
Stephen Rice, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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I had relatives that couldn’t even use dialup internet because they were on a party line.I didn't even know party lines still existed when dialup started.
I always thought it was funny when I would see one of those 900 number ads for being able to have a bunch of people talking at the same time, or just when someone wanted to listen in on other people talking to each other. I thought, "Oh, so now they're charging $1.99 per minute for a party line?" LOL.
VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Where is my acoustic modem!!!
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Major carriers wiped them out, but smaller telcos may still have them. I'm aware of a person still with a party line.
Stephen Rice, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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That is why your speeds are so good. If nobody uses the beam, more bandwidth for you!!!
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GabeU, Champion
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And I thought performing one of the major Windows 10 updates would be awful.
On my old HughesNet legacy plan it would have taken 52 hours. SMH. Now it would take me less than two.
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Steve Frederick-VS1/Beam314, Champion
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Viasat works great for me, it is either Viasat or Hughesnet, no other options available at my house in the country.
GabeU, Champion
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When I had satellite internet installed I was happy as a lark. The difference was amazing. Well, the second day, anyway, as on the first day my upload speed was about 200Kbps and my download speed about 50Kbps. The lady I talked to said she had never seen that before and switched me to a different transponder. Whether what she said was true or not, who knows, but what she did fixed the issue. Then I was happy as a lark. LOL.
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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By the time I got my eMachines desktop the MSN internet service that I chose came with it as a pre-installed application, though I can't remember if, at that point, I really needed to use it, or if I could use the built in dialer.
How times change.
Stephen Rice, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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I remember dating this girl in 1993, with her telling me about this America Online thing and going into something called a chat room. I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about, even though she did her best to describe it. Had I realized what she meant I probably would have asked her to show me at her house. Still, I wouldn't have been able to afford a computer back then, and where I was living at the time, being out on own for pretty much the first time, I wouldn't have wanted to have one. I do remember the girl telling me that her father was really angry that she was jacking up the phone bill so much with going online, as it was by the hour at the time.
Later, though, I loved chat rooms. Yahoo Chat, and the rooms that you could create yourself, were awesome!
VeteranSatUser, Champion
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DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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I bounce back/forth from Sat to Jetpack....download time really depends upon what site/activity.
VeteranSatUser, Champion
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I am not talking about download times. I am talking about response times when you select an action on a website.
DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Anything is better than Edge :).
GabeU, Champion
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Using this video, configured to 1080p, Google Chrome was smooth, but Viasat Browser was stop and go-ish, while using VZW via Jetpack, which is consistent at 20Mbps DL (speed tests). At 720p, VB was OK
Chrome displays the total page, while VB does not load remainder of page below, at least on right hand side, for sure. Let me know if you catch this.
GabeU, Champion
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Just making comments on VB, which might be creating an issue by blocking content...I'd have to evaluate further, but maybe Vimeo was resending some page elements, over and over.
Normally, when possible, I download vids....720p is more than enough on my end.
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Or as the FAQ's state at https://browser.viasat.com/faq#i-don't-see-my-question-listed.-what-should-i-do:
If you have a question or issue not already addressed, we are here to help. Please email us at browser@viasat.com and we will get back to you with an answer or solution to help make your Viasat Browser experience the best possible.
DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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You have identified 2 separate issues, which we have replicated here.
- In an upcoming release, Viasat Browser will include support for hardware accelerated video decode, which should eliminate the stop-and-go-ish behavior with 1080p rendering that you are now seeing. Viasat Browser is currently built off of Chromium 70; there is a new feature in Chromium 72 that supports this functionality and our team is already working on a version of Viasat Browser that is built off of that Chromium version.
- The right hand side will load if you hit refresh, but that it didn’t load in the first place is a bug that the team is actively looking into right now and will address in an upcoming release.
Thanks for bringing both of these issues to our attention!!
DavidBrowserGuy, Browser Expert
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You have identified 2 separate issues, which we have replicated here.
- In an upcoming release, Viasat Browser will include support for hardware accelerated video decode, which should eliminate the stop-and-go-ish behavior with 1080p rendering that you are now seeing. Viasat Browser is currently built off of Chromium 70; there is a new feature in Chromium 72 that supports this functionality and our team is already working on a version of Viasat Browser that is built off of that Chromium version.
- The right hand side will load if you hit refresh, but that it didn’t load in the first place is a bug that the team is actively looking into right now and will address in an upcoming release.
Thanks for bringing both of these issues to our attention!!
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Things are going pretty good this morning. Not bad for a 12 Mbps plan. I have come to believe that your average speed in inversely proportional to the number of complaints you post to the forum. LOL.

VeteranSatUser, Champion
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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Stephen Rice, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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Y’all act like it isn’t possible to make a long distance phone call for dialup.With the exception of someone who has ultra cheap dialup and rarely uses it, and then only for specific reasons, what does it matter?
The majority of people who can still get dialup have it on a local number. I don't know anyone who would be crazy enough to have dialup via a long distance number, except in the above instance, so the fact that someone can dial long distance to get access is kind of a moot point.
Just because one can doesn't mean they would, or at least not under most circumstances.
GabeU, Champion
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I think cable is still 3 miles away from me, no way it makes it here in my lifetime.It's most likely the same for me, and in my case it's less than a mile. Unless they're forced to by some new law, the few houses on my road aren't worth the cost to them.
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
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GabeU, Champion
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I actually took the modems out of two of my old computers as I could see where connections were going at the time. One is with a shorter back plate, as it came out of an old Gateway micro tower, but I could still make it work. The other one is normal sized and came out of a Dell Dimension E521. The only problem would be if MS ended support in future Windows versions. Then again, there's always Linux.
I can still get dialup here from a few different companies, including AOL.
GabeU, Champion
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Those USB modems work pretty well. My folks used one for AOL with their laptop from 2011 until 2016.
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VeteranSatUser, Champion
Michael McDowell
VeteranSatUser, Champion
I can get the 30 Gold. Wonder if that would be Viasat-2 or 1? Then I would go from 487kbps to 60Mbps in how many seconds?
Stephen Rice, Champion
Casual Observer
Sophie Mae
Michael McDowell
edit: Just read down a bit. Guess johnny c was the one I was talking about!
Sophie Mae
https://tipmont.org/news/item/fiber-internet-update
I live in Warren County. I sent an email to our REMC asking if they'd heard about the efforts of Tipmont, etc... and the general manager responded that the board had met to discuss what could be done to get fast internet service in our neck of the woods. I need to touch base with him, as that was several months ago.
As for the Viasat changes: yes, we've been impacted. The first impact was when Viasat2 was being touted as The Next Best Thing To Sliced BreadTM, then the second impact was with the recent changes to the Freedom and grandfathered "Unlimited" plans (I'm on the Silver 25 150GB plan).
The first impact was most likely due to the beam becoming congested with the unlimited plans which preceded Viasat2 coming online, which I'm sure you noticed, too.
The second impact has left us with speeds so slow during prime time as to be nearly unusable. It's not all that groovy during the day M-F either, but it's allowed me to work from home when I needed to.
When I first switched over to Viasat from HughesNet, it was fantastic. The first year or so was positively groovy. Then it all kinda went to Hades in a handbasket. :(
Michael McDowell