06-24-2011, 06:28 AM

We just signed up for broadband service with comcast and i'm shocked at how slow the downloading speed is for this ISP!

We cannot even watch videos on our computer, any more, any type, it's just so stuttery, and slow..
YouTube, forget it..
We got a brand new modem/router from them, so that shouldn't be the problem. Our hard drive is new, and we have 10.4 on our IMac... we have a 700 Mhz PowerPC G4.

Do we forget Comcast and try go with someone else?
I know that AT&T has the new U Verse.. have anyone tried that.

I've never had broadband before, but this is much slower than our previous DSL.
Something's wrong here. The technician who came out, didn't seem very adept at much of anything honestly. It was new service, but it took him, literally over 4 hours to install the new cable lines, drill holes, etc....
He wasn't very pleasant to deal with either.. It was rainy out and he insisted that if he could get both the tv & internet service hooked up that day, I'd be charged an EXTRA fee for having someone come back & hook up what he couldn't do that day!
Finally I had to convince him to get it all done, since I couldn't afford to pay extra for another installation.
I've been doing a bit of research on the web and see NUMEROUS complaints about Comcast service!
We only got them and AT&T to choose from, I think, but DSL was much better service than this garbage. Even downloading a simple webpage, not a video seems to take much more time than I thought it would.
Is there some page I can download to make the downloads faster?
Help.. I need to be able to watch videos.

06-24-2011, 06:56 AM

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06-24-2011, 08:56 AM

Have you done a speed test? Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test
When you signed up for Comcast did they tell you what your upload and download speeds would be? If they are way off, call them and get service.
I have Verizon Fios in NY and Comcast in Florida. There is a huge difference in speed. Comcast is like a snail and Verizon is like a rocket. I also find Comcast employees to be less than desirable to deal with but that's all we have down there. And Comcast is more expensive!

06-24-2011, 09:49 AM

Had Comcast speed was great but outages were common in our neighborhood and it
would usually take a week for a tech so I switched to Uverse service is better hardly an outage and speed was comparable. I always used 10 or 12 mbps service it seems
this day and time anything slower buffers to much on videos.

06-24-2011, 10:37 AM

we have a download speed of 14.64 mbps, and upload speed of 3.08...
I tell ya, it seems slower than the dial-up we used to have...
even our DSL, the slow one, was quicker than this stuff.
We got a 30 trial period, and we just had it installed. I wonder if they'll charge us for the $80 installation fee if we cancel!
I agree the tech who came out, wasn't too polite, didn't seem to really know what he was doing and took a year and a day to install all this stuff. It took him over 4 hours just to install ONE tv, and a Broadband connection.
I'm not liking Comcast at this point... also they told us, we'd get weather channel and that's not coming up either on our tv set.
Comcast seems like a ripoff to me. If that's true, I'm outta here...

06-24-2011, 10:38 AM

You mentioned you had DSL previously. What was your experience like watching videos through that? I'm concerned that the age of the Mac might prevent current video codecs from translating fast enough to provide a satisfactory experience. Your system is less than 1/3 the speed of current computers, and I would imagine has 1GB of RAM or less. Downloading the video is only part of the problem - the computer has to process the video and audio, and then present it to you on the screen. In other words, the bottleneck might not be your connection, but the computer itself.

06-24-2011, 11:49 AM

We have 1 GB of ram. We just installed a brand new hard drive on our computer, I mentioned that.
Before we had this broadband, the internet was not this slow.
Even normal webpages are downloading slower than dial-up!

I was typing a message on a simple message board just yesterday, and it took so long for the words to show up on the screen, it was absurd! I really don't think Comcast is going to do the trick for us.
Also, the Comcast tech said it didn't matter how old your Mac computer was... that the broadband would run good no matter...


how do you like the uverse osxx? That's available in our area.

06-24-2011, 03:33 PM

So your problem may be DNS have you tried Open DNS or Google DNS which is 8.8.8.8 cant remember what Open is because it sounds like you are describing page loading and not internet speed two different things. I do like Uverse had it since Ike because Comcast was out in our area over 3 weeks and I did understand that was a major storm but every other utility was up and running after 2 weeks and those with power generators were still getting Uverse.