Internet Servers?

Val

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Posts
6,729
Loc
Carson City, Nevada
I'm finally getting my computer in the shop this week. :D Since I got such a great response and good advice from you about POS systems, who uses which Internet services (Charter, SBC, etc) and why, or why not? I will be downloading some POS trial programs that you recommended. I will have DSL, not dialup, as the computer I'm getting is incredibly fast and has a lot of memory and "stuff" already programmed into it (XP Pro, MS Office Pro, Photoshop, etc) I would be willing to change my long distance carrier to suite. Thanks in advance, Grumblers!
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Val,
just use the DSLs service.

Or is there more than one DSL service provider in your area....... what are their respective speeds and whad do they cost
 
DSL is usually made available by the local baby bell/phone company. (Verizon, SBC, Sprint, Bellsouth, etc) Some other companies may re-sell the dsl with their own label(long distance companies, AOL, etc), for a lower price, but the wiring is still provided by/serviced by the local phone company.

Alternatives likely in your area (with downstream speed in Megabits per second/Mbps)

Dialup - obsolete/slow/dedicated phone line
DSL - faster low priority (0.7-3.0) (10 in UK)
CABLEMODEM - faster mission critical (4.0-15.0)
FIOS - fastest unknown priority (5, 10, or 30) Basically, replacement for DSL. Not in all areas yet. Can do digital TV too.

Other (expensive) ways: T1, T3, ISDN, FRAME, WIRELESS, SATELLITE, etc

Business DSL, Cable, and FIOS generally start at about $50/month in most markets. (in comparison, the slowest 0.7 Mbps residential DSL starts at $14.95/mo. 5.0 Mbps cable here is $39.95/mo) The price and speeds offered vary by city, and they will always charge more for business customers.

When setting it up, I suggest asking for just a single IP address (cheapest plan) and using your own ROUTER to share the connection with the pc's in your shop. A router/nat firewall I suggest is the LinkSys WRT54G (on sale for $39 at Staples.com this week) Some DSL providers try to give you a USB device. Insist on one that has an ETHERNET port, if possible, so it will work with the router. Some others (Verizon, etc) will give you a wireless router for free, if you ask.

Congratulations on the improvements!

I hope this info was helpful
Mike

[ 02-13-2006, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: Mike Labbe @ GTP ]
 
It's hard to keep up. The companies are always bumping the speeds up


Thanks!
Mike
 
It's all good. More bandwidth. Yay.

(I've been bringing "more bandwidth" to the world for much of my engineering career. Mostly these days I work at 10 Gbps, or 10,000,000,000 bits per second. So while these 5Mbps (5,000,000 bits per second) are rather paltry in comparison, it's the "last mile" of distribution where the bottleneck is, and it seems it's finally beginning to realize the promise of what we've been doing for many years. Thank goodness. Eventually all this stuff really will be transformational.
 
Val,

If you're still looking for POS advice, Jim Miller wrote a great article this month in Picture Framing Magazine.

Mike
 
Yes I am, Mike, thanks. I need to get a subscription to PFM anyway. Looking forward to what Jim has to say.
I'm still waiting for my computer, next week now, but have already received a couple of demo cd's from the reps, and ready to download another couple when the computer gets here, got the passwords and everything! Hoo-boy, this is exciting! Reading, asking, ready to get going! Patience is not my best quality, but I know I need to wait and do the research. Waiting...waiting...
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Our Decor just came in, and I see that POS Software is their feature article this month, too.

-The 2/06 DECOR article by Kristin Stefek starts on page 64 WEB LINK

-The 2/06 PFM article by Jim Miller starts on page 62 WEB LINK

Both stories have some great advice to help in your search.

Mike
 
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