Ashur wrote:
EDIT: I had Giganews once and it is good. I just can't justify $15/mo for something that should come from my ISP as part of a basic service offering. I don't use it that much.
It really shouldn't come with your ISP as a service. The usenet was never intended to be used for binaries. Usenet was for text based discussion boards. Your ISP has no responsibility to load up huge TBs of binary posts on their servers.
I don't think COX even advertises the usenet as a service. I could be wrong. If your ISP advertises the ability to download binaries from the usenet then you have a point.
I concur. Usenet is not really a basic ISP service. And good luck with Time Warner. Aren't they RoadRunner? They discontinued their usenet servers (which was an outsourced service to begin with) as of June 23. I read that SBC (AT&T) was discontinuing them as of July 2008 but I wasn't able to find that on their support site.
I'm not going to Time Warner/Roadrunner. In fact right now it doesn't look like we're even switching to AT&T.
Thanks for all the feedback folks. Unless I need HD programming and lots of movie channels, it looks like staying with WOW is the best option for my family.
EDIT: I called to cancel and got some lady who sounded like the cop in Fargo (Is their sales call center in Minnesota?). She offered me the u-300 package for $20 off for 6 months, darn tootin, and then a permanent $10 off the Internet, dontcha know and finally another $50 cash back on a VISA gift card, what do ya think about that, eh? (for a total of $200) so I can't say they didn't try to retain me, but in the end that leaves me with either missing channels or a higher bill in six months as well as being down to one DVR. In the end I just decided to pass for now and stick with WOW. Now watch WOW fuck me and jack up my rates next month.
I apologize for my thread asking the same thing. I guess I figured that because it was new to our area that it was new for everyone. I didn't know it was already out for over a year. I am hoping that I am not making a bad move here by making the switch.
One of the guys who we just hired a few months ago worked Customer Service for U-Verse and he explained a few things to me. The being able to dvr 4 shows at the same time thing only works if you aren't using your computer connection. You have 4 lines basically coming into the house and one of those is for your computer. So you can do 3 shows at the same time and have your computer up and connected.
Having the NFL network was one of the main selling points for me. HD doesn't make a difference to me at this time because our current TV isn't HD. One of the sticking points for me was going from 15mb down and 1mb up to 10mb down and ?? up. The sales guy wasn't all that knowledgable and had no flyiers or anything.
The come this Saturday so I'll let you all know how it goes.
Bubba Grizz wrote:One of the sticking points for me was going from 15mb down and 1mb up to 10mb down and ?? up.
10 down/1.5 up
They have variable speed plans but yeah 10 down is one of them. I'm at 8 because I didn't think it was worth the extra $15 a month for the 10. It's not like I download 1.2 TBs a month so I seldom max the line for long.
They disconnected my service about a month ago. When I called them up they said it appeared that I never had U-Verse and I was like "Huh?". So that took a day to get resolved. Other than that and the initial hassle of getting it installed I don't have any complaints. However I only have the internet service not the TV.
Well I do have one complaint: They don't integrate their bill with other AT&T services. So I get two bills and have to send two payments to two different places. Not a huge deal as I utilize bill pay but it just seems a bit unnecessary to me.
What other AT&T services do you have? I have my TV & internet on one bill. I could not get CallVantage on that bill, but I can get a wireless account on it.
Boogahz wrote:What other AT&T services do you have? I have my TV & internet on one bill. I could not get CallVantage on that bill, but I can get a wireless account on it.
I have telephone service (pots) with AT&T. DSL used to show up on that bill. U-Verse is apparently it's own .. universe.
Boogahz wrote:What other AT&T services do you have? I have my TV & internet on one bill. I could not get CallVantage on that bill, but I can get a wireless account on it.
I have telephone service (pots) with AT&T. DSL used to show up on that bill. U-Verse is apparently it's own .. universe.
I am fairly certain that there are still some "AT&T" services we will never see billed together, or the public might be more aware of how Ma Bell came back years ago.
Truant wrote:You can get your telephone (assuming we are talking about a hard line) through UVERSE, in which case it will be on the same bill.
Don't know.. They said nothing about it. I know you can get phone service through U-Verse but I'm fairly certain that's not POTS. That's VOIP or something. Which I don't want.
Like I said it's not a huge deal. Takes 10 extra seconds to add that payment each month. Just seems odd they they can't consolidate all AT&T services onto a single bill. This is the 21st century afterall.
I don't think the Uverse Voice service is available everywhere yet. I believe it just became available here in June. The good thing about it, is it comes with a UPS to keep the Gateway powered up during a power outage. The bad thing about it is that I would have to pay a $95 install fee to have them come out and plug it in since I am an existing customer... (I have heard of several people getting that installation fee waived though)
Is this worth getting? I'm sick of TW cable and the fact that there is no Big Ten Network on the horizon pisses me off so I am plotting on making the switch.
A friend of mine works for TW Cable and gets their service for free. He recently switched to AT&T if that tells you anything..
Plain old telephone service, or POTS, is a term which describes the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in most parts of the world. The name is a reflection of the telephone service still available after the advent of more advanced forms of telephony such as ISDN, mobile phones and VoIP. It has been available almost since the introduction of the public telephone system in the late 19th century, in a form mostly unchanged to the normal user despite the introduction of Touch-Tone dialing, electronic telephone exchanges and fiber-optic communication into the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
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While POTS provides limited features, low bandwidth and no mobile capabilities, it provides greater reliability than other telephony systems (mobile phone, VoIP, etc.). Many telephone service providers attempt to achieve "dial-tone availability" more than 99.999% of the time the telephone is taken off-hook. This is equivalent to having no dial-tone available less than five minutes each year, an often-cited benchmark in marketing and systems engineering comparisons, called the "five nines" reliability standard. Such Landline phones also give, in most cases, greater voice clarity, and many are sited in offices or other locations suited for conversation.
Saturday morning I get a call from the technician who is going to come out and set up my UVerse. He said he needed to stop at the box and make some adjustments and then he'd be right over. He arrived at my house at 9am and I showed him where our TV's were and where my computers were located. Everything went very smooth as far as the installation goes and he hooked me up with some nice wiring to clean up the mess that I had going. He went over how to use the dvr and all that kind of stuff and all was well.
Until 5 minutes after he left that is. I noticed that our phones weren't working. Something that we didn't check before he left. It didn't occur to me to do that. So I get on the phone and have to go through the whole deal of the automated menu system bullshit. About 30 minutes later I am finally talking to a person. I tell them what is going on and they proceed to tell me that if they have to enter the home and find that it is our fault and not theirs it will cost me $71. I reitterated to this person that the UVerse guy had just left and that I know that it is on AT&T to fix this. They got snotty with me again and said that a technician will be dispatched and they could be over right away or as late as 8pm Monday night.
As of this morning we still don't have our land line working. My father in law came over and checked things out (he is retired AT&T) and said that the wiring job looks very sloppy. He determined that the problem is outside if the house but he can't open the box because it has one of those tamper locks on it that tell technicians if you've been fucking with their stuff. Hopefully they get this working today during the day as I am going to the Packer game tonight.
Another issue I am having trouble with is my home network. Before I switched I was using a linksys wireless router, I had been able to connect to one of my computers remotely (from work mostly), and I could see all the computers on my network and interact with them without issue from which ever computer I was on at the time. Now, I am using their gateway as my wireless router and I get internet just fine and with pretty great speed. (side note: I discovered that my road runner was only giving me 4.5mbs when I was paying for 15mbs. I was a bit pissed and feel a bit more vindicated in switching now.) I can't see my other computers as easily and can't interact that well with them either. I seriously doubt I'll be able to connect from work until I can figure out how to all ports to be opened like 3389 so I can RDP. Right now I can't share a simple printer with my other computers and it is pissing me off. I know there has to be a setting someplace in this router but I can't quite find it yet.
So there is my saga from UVerse as it stands so far.
And yeah what sucks is that it comes with no instructions. I emailed 2Wire tech supprt (who actually makes the hardware) asking for a manual and they told me to contact AT&T. I was like.. Huh? Oh yeah... AT&T doesn't have them either. At least according to someone I talked to. Best you can find are ones for earlier models.
As far as RDP goes.. Opening up port 3389 is a bad idea. You really should look into tunneling RDP over SSH. It's quite simple to do and a lot more secure.
Ok. Our phones are now working. I had gotten home and got on my cell and called ATT and was prepared to bitch up a storm and then the lady mention that the ticket had just been picked up an hour earlier. Granted I was pissed that it took them that long to get the ticket but I was happy that they were finally working on it. No sooner did I hang up my cell did my land line start to ring. It was the tech calling to make sure that the phones were working. Yay.
I figured out how to open ports and make things work. Part of the problem was my McAfee firewall. I turned it off so that I could actually connect for sure today from work. I didn't want to get here and find that I couldn't. I have work that I need to do on that computer that needs to be done today. My question then is, how many firewalls are enough? I have my firewall that comes with 2Wire and then my McAfee on my computers each have their firewall, and then there is the Windows firewall as well. Should I throw on Zone Alarm just to complicate my life even more?
Bubba Grizz wrote:
I figured out how to open ports and make things work. Part of the problem was my McAfee firewall. I turned it off so that I could actually connect for sure today from work. I didn't want to get here and find that I couldn't. I have work that I need to do on that computer that needs to be done today. My question then is, how many firewalls are enough? I have my firewall that comes with 2Wire and then my McAfee on my computers each have their firewall, and then there is the Windows firewall as well. Should I throw on Zone Alarm just to complicate my life even more?
You don't need any of the virus, zone alarm, etc stuff Bubba.
Do you have Vista? The built in protection (Windows Defender) and Vista's own firewall is fine.
If anyone has the 6mbps service you can upgrade to the 12mbps a month for free (but only for 6 months). I'll probably just drop it back to 6mbps after 6 months as I don't do much super downloading anymore but I'll still be saving $5 a month since their 6mbps service is at $35 a month rather than the $40 it has been when it first came out and what I've been paying since then. I like how when places raise the price they make sure you pay but when it's lowered they don't bother letting you know about it!
Anyway, I know two other people that switched from Comcast and they like uverse more. So there's two more endorsements. Once you get past any installation woes you may encounter.
Man, I spend 33/month just for Giganews/Newsleecher!
Totally worth it!
25Mbps $79 or 69,(pretty sure 69) not sure which. That's supposed to be boosted to 50 Mbps fairly soon. I never get below 26Mbps in giganews, solid, no dips, bursts to 50Mbps.
I still have UVerse and they keep making it better. Not only can you DVR up to 4 shows at a time but each box can set the recordings and watch recorded shows without needing to be at the main set. NFL network is still my favorite channel. I also paid for the HD service as I got a new tv that had it. I still like UVerse and haven't had any problems since the initial install.
