O/T Wireless dial up?.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 17, 2008

Big disappointment when I got my brand new Laptop home from Best Buy tonight. I went to go online with it, and discovered it doesn't have a phone line port. Turns out it is set up for wireless only. I didn't check for a port at the store because last I knew they all had them. Does my new laptop need to be returned or is there such a thing as wireless dial up?. Unfortunatly I am stuck with dial up,

S.Crum · Jul 17, 2008

Good luck returning it. You'll learn the ugly side of doing business with Best Buy somewhere else.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 17, 2008

I think they'll take it back...it may be for store credit, though........L

Mattlt · Jul 17, 2008

Is there such a thing as a USB modem?

OldFarmTractor · Jul 17, 2008

You should be able to get a PCMCIA card that will do the phone modem thing. Matter of fact, email me and I will see if I have one I could send you. Or check ebay.

Or you could get a wireless card for your machine. My Brother has one and it is slick. Pretty quick.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 17, 2008

Too bad I paid $30 to have Geeksquad take all the extra trial junk off from it and optimize it before I brought it home. Its a nice laptop so I'm pretty bummed out about it.

old bc · Jul 17, 2008

Check the links below. These are just two of many that are available.

old bc

www.zoom.com/products/dial_up_external_usb.html

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16825116108

Nikolas Britton · Jul 18, 2008

Computers don't come with dial-up modems anymore. Are you sure your stuck with dial-up? My dad lives in a small town (300 people) and even he has a fixed wireless broadband connection. Even 1xRTT through your cell phone, ISDN, or satellite are better then dial-up.

A wireless or network dial-up modem will never work correctly... one of the many reasons they ditched that crap back in the 90s. A USB modem is probably the way to go. Whatever dial-up modem you get make sure it supports V.92, V.44, and V.42bis ITU-T standards.

Nikolas Britton · Jul 18, 2008

His new computer probably doesn't have a CardBus slot, they switched them to the new ExpressCard interface, which is physically and electrically incompatible with the older PCMCIA/PC Card/CardBus standards.

Nikolas Britton · Jul 18, 2008

Yeah, take it back and get a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air. They even have a USB modem for it.

onefarmer · Jul 18, 2008

I'm using a USB modem on my laptop. It's a USR modem

kyplowboy · Jul 18, 2008

Don't know about where you are but when I got married 6 weeks ago the new bride was not going to live with dial up. I did not have anything at the house, not even a land line, just used cell phone and got online here at work. Our county has been in the works of getting high speed wireless county wide for a while but it is not running yet. She called att. We could get broadband at the house. I live almost to the end of a dead end road with 3 houses on it. We live so far back we have to keep our own tom cat. She got some one who was nice enough to tell her paying for the fastest broad band would not speed things up. They had 4 speeds avalble, our house could only go up to the second one. It is not as fast as the T1 line I have here at work and share with 3 other people, but is beats the fire out of dial up. I had dial up till I got this job 3.5 years ago, I droped it because all it did was make me mad.

ATT guy came out and messed with the old phone line and gave us a wireless modium and any where in the house her lap top will run at 54K, don't know much bout these things but my old dial up was 21k on a good day.

Give'm a call they might suprise you.

Dave

MarkB_MI · Jul 18, 2008

USB modem is the simplest solution. It used to be that a modem was a necessity when traveling, but anymore wifi is available just about everwhere. So you don't have to bother with dragging around a modem when you travel.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 18, 2008

First you need to go online and download new laptop drivers.(just kidding) you cann't.

You will need a wireless router and then sometype of broadband connection.
There are several types of broadbands check around to see what other have in your area. some will give you the equipment with a 2 year contract. Depending on the speed you will spend about 40 - 50 a month.

All depends on what you want to do. If you want to watch youtube. better get broadband, if you going to check your email modem would work.

Goose · Jul 18, 2008

I just bought a new Dell a couple of weeks ago, and it has dialup. Also Windows XP instead of Visa. Dell is the only one who will preinstall XP anymore.

It's frustrating. I live on the family farm, and there are too many trees for line-of-sight wireless, I'm in a mile wide dead zone between two DSL transmitters, and satellite is pretty much priced out of the market.

With "web accelerate", my dialup at home is almost as fast as my DSL at work. I maintain a home office, so I had a second land line run dedicated to my computer to keep from tying up the regular phone line.

Someone advertised reasonably priced satellite service recently, but when I researched it online I found mostly complaints. Poor installations, equipment breakdowns, non-existent customer service, etc.

Guess we'll hang on and see what happens.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 18, 2008

I've kept checking on getting high speed internet over the years, but its still unavailible. I live in a small country town with mostly older people. I've been told that it could be many years more before the phone company offers DSL here because of too little demand and the cost would be too high for the phone company to consider it worth doing. I am excited that Comcast may very well be availible here before too long. Other than that the only thing availible would be a service like Wildblue, which is satellite internet, but it is expensive and I've heard the service is disappointing. I want high speed internet, and as soon as I can get it here I will go for it.

Looks like I will be getting a USB modem for my new laptop and hope that Comcast makes it here shortly, because they are expanding their network bigtime in my area. Some of my town already has it.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 18, 2008

The guy at Best Buy tried talking me into a MacBook. I decided to stay with windows so I got myself a new Toshiba A-305 to replace my deceased Toshiba L25. I don't know is availible for MacBooks for software, but I wanted the Microsoft Office Home and Student software for college. I have been pretty happy with Windows myself.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 18, 2008

Worst Buy has one. Compact and cheaper than a RS-232 external modem, but won't work with Linux for me.

Gerald J.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 18, 2008

what is the web accelerater? does it cost extra or is it a download and where do you get it? does it work with old copper lines also?

I also live on a farm and tired of slow internet that takes minutes to load one page at times.

Eric SEI · Jul 18, 2008

Cincinnati Bell (Fuse.net) provided a USB and Ethernet modem when I subscribed to their DSL service. So, yes, they do exist.

O/T Wireless dial up?.

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