Byte by Bite

Wildblue

by Marv Dealy

Much as I would like to respond to these folks, I think it would be far more useful if they’d hear from you faithful readers, a good bunch of whom have availed yourselves of the satellite Internet service the Colorado company provides.

The email invitation to tell my story comes from Wild Blue’s marketing team—apparently I misspoke when I said the company was comprised of two guys in a kitchen in Colorado. It’s evidently those two guys and several more folks in the living room as well.

In any event, the slant of the email is they want me to share my story of how moving from slow dialup to satellite (not a move I actually made) has changed my life for the better. They actually say “We want to hear your stories about how going from a dial-up connection to High Speed Internet has impacted your life. What unique experiences have you had?”

They then provide the following link to a form that you can fill out on their website to tell your story (http://my.wildblue.net/content/true_blue/index.asp). Sorry about the long address; make sure you type it correctly to get to the form—note there is an underscore or underline between true and blue in the address. Then, tell them your stories and don’t forget to talk about all the fun you had with their band of idiot installers.

Of course, those of you who took my suggestion and went straight to Black Sheep Satellite in Georgetown won’t have the same exciting stories to tell about missed appointments, satellite dishes aimed the wrong direction, or satellite dishes installed so as to block the view out your window. But there are those out there with some awful experiences with installers that showed up on behalf of Wild Blue—remember the installers don’t actually work for Wild Blue, they’re just sub contractors—and you people need to share your stories. Maybe the guys in the kitchen in Colorado will get the hint and tighten up their requirements before they hand out installation contracts so willy nilly.

While we’re on the Wild Blue subject, I have to pass along a note from faithful reader David Howland. “Been reading with interest your columns in the YHH about Wild Blue. I was particularly pleased with the quote from Ann Marie at the Blackberry Inn last month about how it was the biggest thing to happen in Buck Meadows since the 49’er Restaurant opened last year. I'm the ‘maintenance department’ for Yosemite Ridge (of which the 49’er is a part), and danged proud of that restaurant—there's a lot of ‘me’ in there from the remodel.”

“Oh yeah, my point. Let's not forget that there’s still another option out there. I’ve had high-speed Internet for almost two years, and my boss Joe has had it since before he even bought the property up here when we were still down at Tulloch—DirecWay. Sorry, I mean HughesNet now. Trust me, I’m not singing the praises of HughesNet, the one time I’ve called tech support it sucked! On hold forever, calls routed to India. However, since about everyone in the country except us truly ‘rural’ folk are getting other high speed options, there are lots of used D-way systems out there (my complete DW4000 system cost me just under $200 including shipping on E-Bay). The ones with the newer modems (which didn’t exist yet when I bought mine) seem to be going a bit higher. Craigslist.com is another good place to look if you’re willing to drive to pick one up cheap.”

“The upside of buying a used (make sure it's been properly decommissioned) system is you own it, no contract, just the monthly fee which frankly seems a bit high at 60 bucks, but there's no freaking way I could go back to 28.8 (at best) ‘Mountain Dial-Up.’ I managed to B.S. my way into installing mine myself, but I wouldn't recommend that. TV dishes are easy, done several, Internet dishes (at least D-way ones) are much, much pickier.”

“There's a pretty good comparison of the two systems here: http://www.copperhead.cc/wbhn.htm. Me, after reading that, well, ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it.’ My system works as well as it was designed for (not to mention long since paid for). Both companies have their infamous fair access policy (FAP) limits, just in different ways. Speaking of that, do the two camps (Berkeley and San Jose) even know that exists before they offer wi-fi to the campers? I mean, no matter what level of service your paying for, if you've got a bunch of kids with laptops downloading big files you're gonna get ‘fap'ed.’

Thanks Dave for pointing out that other possibilities exist. As he says, now that some folks are switching to newer stuff, there’s some older stuff out there that can be utilized at quite a savings. I’m not sure how much of a savings you’ll realize—Wild Blue last I checked was still giving out free installation and only charging $299 for the equipment, so weigh that before running out and getting some used equipment.

Windows Vista

There are those of you out there who I’m sure are chomping at the bit to run out and get the newest release from Microsoft of their Windows operating system, called Vista. I still think they should have called it “Horizon” as it’s been delayed so often it’s barely visible on the, well, horizon.

Before any of you rush out and get the upgrades, you need to think about what the process is going to require. First, you’d better have a new or nearly new computer, or you’ll be facing some upgrades to your hardware and to at least some of your drivers as well.

If you don’t have a lot of free space on your hard drive, forget it. If you don’t have at least one half and preferably one whole gigabyte of RAM installed, forget it. Or, if your computer is working just fine, doing what you want it to do even though it may not be the latest and greatest in hardware, just forget the Vista upgrade. If your computer isn’t broken, don’t fix it. If you just have to have the newest toys, however, you might want to wait a bit as soon all new non-Mac computers will have Vista pre-installed on them. If you do choose to do the upgrade route, make sure you understand which programs you’re going to have to upgrade as well as which hardware, and give your self plenty of time to accomplish all the tasks.