to adsl or not to adsl

ADSL, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, is a revolutionary new way of connecting to the Internet. While traditional modem-based dial-up services transfer data to your computer via an analogue signal, ADSL uses the latest broadband technology to transfer data digitally, at up to 1500k per second - almost 30 times faster than via 56K modem.

extract from the Chariot Website

My dialup account expires tomorrow, so I called up my ISP today to renew it... which is usually a pretty painless exercise, once you get done waiting on hold with the annoyingly perky recorded woman telling me that my call is important to her, my call has been placed in a queue and one of their operators will be with me shortly.

For better or for worse my call got answered by the ever so slightly perky (and no less annoying) Simon (I think that's what he said his name was)... now normally they just go "same again?" I say yes, I give them my credit card number and expiry date, wham bam, thank you ma'am... but noooooo.... Simon had to pay too much attention to not only my connection times (apparently I have very good times and hardly ever have a drop out, which is true... but not why I was calling)... he then expressed surprise that I was paying $135 for three months, which I'll admit does kind of sound like a lot (but is only actually $45 a month), but its the same amount I've been paying since I got connected to the internet back in, god, how long ago... 1998 I guess... yeah, that would be about right, because I was working for the Courts Authority at Port Adelaide at the time... I remember filling out the paperwork at my desk.

But suddenly Simon had all these other options about what plans I could use instead of the one I'm on (which I don't think even appears officially on their list of plans anymore, I've been on it that long... granted the original ISP I was with was absorbed by this one, so that never helps either). But the other plans he mentioned either don't have as big a download limit as this one (although lately the 2.5 gig download limit seems a little more snug than it ever did before... and what do you know, as if on cue, I just got a 250mb remaining message from my ISP), or else they have the dreaded Busy Killer, where you get booted off the system after a certain period of time during busy periods... no thank you very much, been there, done that, didn't like it! I was wandering around on the cordless phone feeling overly hot (once again, although thank the proverbials that a change comes in tomorrow) and thinking "Dude... just ask me for my credit card number and renew my account... seriously!"

Then he mentioned the magic word... ADSL... I will admit, I've been thinking about ADSL, Broadband, call it what you will, for a while now... its in the back of my mind as something I need to ask J about, since he's the technically whizkid in my life with the disappearance back into the woodwork of Raury...

I mean, sure, ADSL sounds good in principal... 40 gig download limit, $49 a month (which works out as $147 per quarter, only $12 more than I currently spend), supposedly both the connection and the ADSL modem are free on that particular plan, and it's a download speed of 512kb versus 56kb... on the downside it's a 2 year (I love how they call it 24 month so it sounds like less) contract... and it sounds like there would be some screwing around with either the phone company or at the very least, my phone line...

I hate frickin around with stuff like this... once I'm on a plan that works for me I don't like to change usually come hell or high water... okay, I have done, but only on my mobile account and with my long distance call options on the landline... never with my internet account.

Decisions, decisions... do I stay on my dialup account, which is sometimes painfully slow, but which I know and which works for me... or do I change to something that could theoretically be much faster and let me do more, but will involve possibly changing my modem and doing a lot of fudging around...

Opinions anyone?

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