06-25-2005, 07:38 PM

I tried to buy last weekend from the Apple Store and used their 90 days same as cash option and was approved, so I thought all was well. Then on Monday I got an email from them saying there was a problem with "my bank". I am assuming that the bank providing credit for the 90 days same as cash did not provide a line of credit that was
great enough to cover the cost of the computer, but they had sent on the software and extended warranty. Well, I cancelled the order and refused the delivery of the other things. I'm glad I did now.

On Monday I will go to my local Apple authorized reseller and purchase my 20" iMac G5. They are the only Apple place in my small city of 50,000 and have just a handful of employees. I think I prefer to give them my business because it would mean something to them. I don't see any great difference in prices and I would have somebody I could go to and talk with face to face if a have a question or a problem. I spent nearly an hour today talking with the owner and have a good feeling about the place.

Does anybody have any opinions about the .mac software program? How about choice of connections, might cable or dsl be better? Currently I have dialup, but then I only use my pc online about once a week so it didn't make sense to go with something better.

Great forum! I've been spending a lot of time reading posts here and am excited about starting my mac experience next week.

06-25-2005, 07:48 PM

DSL is only an option to a lucky few so check with your phone company to see if you can get it. We bought with an educational discount as we homeschool and have a son
attending college classes. I know someone else that's used the ed discount because they
are on the local school board. And a person that used it because he has a daughter in
school (I didn't check to see if that one is kosher).

The ed discount is also great for software.

06-25-2005, 08:13 PM

Originally Posted by mmoy

DSL is only an option to a lucky few so check with your phone company to see if you can get it. We bought with an educational discount as we homeschool and have a son
attending college classes. I know someone else that's used the ed discount because they
are on the local school board. And a person that used it because he has a daughter in
school (I didn't check to see if that one is kosher).

The ed discount is also great for software.

My phone company does have DSL because I have received many solicitations from them to use it.
I don't even have any kind of remote link to anything educational and when I was in my local Apple store today, The Mac Guys, I heard them tell somebody that they do not offer it. But it will be nice to deal with somebody locally.

06-25-2005, 08:22 PM

Yes, the stores do not have the ability to do ed discounts. BTW, check with your phone company even if they do send ads to you. I just heard of a coworker that called up the phone company with people all around him with DSL service and they said that they couldn't provide it for him as the PBX was at capacity. Someone else would have to drop service before he could get it.

06-25-2005, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by mmoy

Yes, the stores do not have the ability to do ed discounts. BTW, check with your phone company even if they do send ads to you. I just heard of a coworker that called up the phone company with people all around him with DSL service and they said that they couldn't provide it for him as the PBX was at capacity. Someone else would have to drop service before he could get it.

Is DSL better than cable? I have a friend who has the cable and loves it, but he has a package with the tv service also and I got rid of cable altogether a couple of months ago. I know that one or the other offers a tier of different speeds depending on your needs or wants.

06-25-2005, 08:38 PM

DSL is usually cheaper and more consistent. With DSL, your circuit goes to the PBX. With Cable, you share bandwidth with your neighbors but your overall speed is faster unless you have a few neighbors hogging the bandwidth.

One other thing is that DSL requires you to be within two miles of a PBX. So DSL may not be available if you live in rural or suburban areas.

06-25-2005, 08:44 PM

Originally Posted by mmoy

DSL is usually cheaper and more consistent. With DSL, your circuit goes to the PBX. With Cable, you share bandwidth with your neighbors but your overall speed is faster unless you have a few neighbors hogging the bandwidth.

One other thing is that DSL requires you to be within two miles of a PBX. So DSL may not be available if you live in rural or suburban areas.

I live within 3 miles of my phone company's downtown location, so distance should not be a problem. I think I might rather do a deal with the phone company since I still do business with them, but currently not with the cable company.

06-25-2005, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by elocs

I live within 3 miles of my phone company's downtown location, so distance should not be a problem. I think I might rather do a deal with the phone company since I still do business with them, but currently not with the cable company.

DSL looplength is not based on a line of sight distance. Just because the main office is a couple miles away makes no difference. The actual 'distance' could be thousands of feet, even if you lived across the street from the office.
Also, DSL is not as consistent and reliable as Cable. This is because unless your house was built or rewired fully in the recent past, you are dealing with grossly antiquated phone wiring inside your house. This can cause signal strength to vary greatly from room to room in your house. You may get a good signal to your house, but once it is there it turns to crap.
Granted some cable lines are fairly old as well, but not nearly as old and frail as the telephone lines.

06-25-2005, 08:59 PM

Originally Posted by D3v1L80Y

DSL looplength is not based on a line of sight distance. Just because the main office is a couple miles away makes no difference. The actual 'distance' could be thousands of feet, even if you lived across the street from the office.
Also, DSL is not as consistent and reliable as Cable. This is because unless your house was built or rewired fully in the recent past, you are dealing with grossly antiquated phone wiring inside your house. This can cause signal strength to vary greatly from room to room in your house. You may get a good signal to your house, but once it is there it turns to crap.
Granted some cable lines are fairly old as well, but not nearly as old and frail as the telephone lines.

So, what to do, what to do? I am sure my phone lines old (nearly 40 years) I am not sure if I could have them run a new line to the house (maybe 50 feet from the pole), but I did have a new line put in about 7 years ago to the bedroom where the iMac will be, if that makes any difference.

06-25-2005, 09:09 PM

Originally Posted by elocs

So, what to do, what to do? I am sure my phone lines old (nearly 40 years) I am not sure if I could have them run a new line to the house (maybe 50 feet from the pole), but I did have a new line put in about 7 years ago to the bedroom where the iMac will be, if that makes any difference.

You very well may be able to get DSL and it may work just fine. I was only pointing out that IMO, cable is a much better, more stable option. The point about the wiring is that the wiring inside your house is what usually causes the majority of headaches people have with DSL. Running a new line to your house will not resolve any issue if you have old wiring inside your home, because you are not replacing any old wiring...you are merely adding to your exisiting wiring.
Having worked for years at an ISP, and dealing with customer issues for both DSL and Cable, I would strongly advise trying for cable first. In my experience and my opinion it is clearly the better choice.

06-25-2005, 09:20 PM

Originally Posted by D3v1L80Y

You very well may be able to get DSL and it may work just fine. I was only pointing out that IMO, cable is a much better, more stable option. The point about the wiring is that the wiring inside your house is what usually causes the majority of headaches people have with DSL. Running a new line to your house will not resolve any issue if you have old wiring inside your home, because you are not replacing any old wiring...you are merely adding to your exisiting wiring.
Having worked for years at an ISP, and dealing with customer issues for both DSL and Cable, I would strongly advise trying for cable first. In my experience and my opinion it is clearly the better choice.

Oops! What I meant was run a new cable to the house, not a phone wire, since the cable, which shares a pole with the phone is just a short distance away. I am currently reading an article about dsl vs. cable which I googled. I thought maybe mac users might have a distinct preference.
The mac store that I visited did first suggest cable, which is perfectly valid, but they are also just a few doors coincidently down from the cable company. They also mentioned that a wireless company is coming into my area.

06-25-2005, 11:05 PM

What I see people doing with DSL is using a connection near the source of the phone line in their house (usually in the basement). Then you just toss in a wired or wireless router and you're all set.

Our local cable company has had lots of problems with TV and Internet service (they're the one with the CEO and his son that were convicted of fleecing the company and investors). Your local cable company isn't necessarily more reliable.

06-25-2005, 11:15 PM

Originally Posted by mmoy

What I see people doing with DSL is using a connection near the source of the phone line in their house (usually in the basement). Then you just toss in a wired or wireless router and you're all set.

Our local cable company has had lots of problems with TV and Internet service (they're the one with the CEO and his son that were convicted of fleecing the company and investors). Your local cable company isn't necessarily more reliable.

My local cable company is Charter and their services for internet cost $39.95 and $49.95 per month. My local phone company is CenturyTel and their website says their DSL is only $19.95 per month. If this is the case, I don't if cable is good enough to merit spending twice as much a monnth to get it as DSL does. Actually, getting a line to the house close to where the computer would be should be an option also.

06-25-2005, 11:21 PM

Those are pretty good rates. In my area, I think that the cable company charges $40 to $50 (depending on whether or not you have TV) with DSL charging $30 with a one-year contract. In the city where I work, I think that cable internet is $50 to $60. They seem to charge whatever the market will bear and it can vary widely from town to town around here.

06-25-2005, 11:30 PM

I think it's a crapshoot. I've been hooked up to DSL for a year in a 30-year-old house, and have never had a problem. But during that time and the previous year, the cable TV has gone out twice.

Before I moved here from a huge apartment building, I had a cable connection to my computer that for nearly six months would die at 11:55 a.m. each weekday and stay off for an hour. I believe someone was stealing it. The company tested the connection each time I phoned to complain but said it was still connected, despite it being dead at my end whether I booted into OS X or 9.

The company could not or would not fix it. The one time a cable guy showed up, he showed me one of the building's junction rooms and said the thing was all jury-rigged, so I assumed that finding a signal thief would have cost more than fixing it. So when I moved, I told the cable company to get stuffed, and went back to dialup for a year until DSL became available.

There is another DSL benefit. It doesn't connect until I tell it to, by using a drop-down in the menu bar, and I can disconnect it at any time. To disconnect with cable, I had to unscrew it from the modem, pull the other end from the wall or unplug the modem.