Modems are not obselete

Hack the Planet Prime: my antenna fu is the greatest

"boogah smalls finally gives the crucial details on what features the AirPort firmware has that the RG-1100 doesn't. I don't count the modem as a feature since modems are obsolete, but the others make sense."

Modems are *not* obselete. If I could have afforded an Apple AirPort Base Station when I was in San Francisco, I would have bought one in a heartbeat. I didn't have high-speed internet access for the entire 10.5 months I was down there. In fact, for the last 4 months, the best I could get was 28.8kbps because the phone line at that place was so bad.

I couldn't get DSL. I couldn't get Cable internet. I couldn't get Sprint line-of-sight wireless. Richochet went out of business just before I was going to sign up with them. Couldn't even get ISDN (yes, I tried).

An Apple AirPort Base Station would have let me connect to the internet without having to manually dial up on my PowerBook time after time after time. I bought a WiFi card but could only use it at Starbucks because none of the other affordable base stations had a modem like the Apple one.

Broadband access is hard to come by in the Bay Area, and in a LOT of other areas in the country. (not so in urban Canada, but hey, I wasn't there)

So, sorry Wes but being able to buy a $180 base station and use it with Apple's nice software and connect with a modem to use WiFi is a wonderful thing.

Written on March 12, 2002