I got DSL in 1998. I was working for a project called Web, White & Blue and they pretty much said we can’t pay our going rate until you have broadband. The work would simply be too slow on dialup. Friends at the time wondered how I could have remained a modem person for so long.

I am always interested in why someone moves to broadband today. The post below comes from a friend, Roger Sween who recently upgraded to dialup. Roger and his wife are retired. They were nominated for a Minnesota Coalition of Government Information award this year. So they are librarian friends of mine. I was surprised their conversion to broadband was so recent.

Here’s their story:

Our high tech son has been after us for some years to update our seven-year old computers and switch to wireless and high speed. That seemed like too much with the expense, difficulty of learning something new, and complexity of shifting our hundreds of contacts to a new email address. Kristofer, who is undaunted, changes computers ever couple years and is triple geeky, persisted. So that kept it before our minds.

The big nudge, however, was that we both spend a lot of time online, and with dial access that stopped the other and froze out our phone. So finally after doing business the old fashioned way for four or more hours a day for each of us, we decided to bite the bullet and set out to find high speed. We quickly came to the conclusion that first we had to buy new computers, and the more we searched the more anxious we became. New models were glamorous and enticing. After comparison shopping at Circuit City and Best Buy the week before Easter Week, we decided to get Toshiba 135s. I haven’t cared for laptops because of their susceptibility to fat fingering the keyboard and because the cursor jumps around. But I decided that the screen was such an advance over what I had, and if we had to learn this stuff, it would be better to do it together. So we got two at Best Buy.

We returned on Palm Sunday to find that Saturday’s price had jumped with the new week, but when we threatened to go to the competition, they would match their price. Besides since we were buying as a family two of the same computers, we got OFFICE 2007 at one license for three computers. We picked them up on Maundy Thursday, and I soon learned that I could not live with the flat cursor pad and bought a wireless mouse for greater control.

Getting high speed was a challenge, meant calling several vendors, trying to get the information to mesh with what we wanted and what we knew. We wound up with Charter since we were already cable subscribers, the service person was clear, and the speed at the base level was twice DSL. We also got a good six-month introductory rate and webspace thrown in. Installation took a long time. Some of the cabling to our 15-year old house had to be replaced, the cabling in the walls could no longer accommodate tv and internet on the same line, and the two techs who got us hooked up spent hours trying to get the thing to work.

The biggest challenge for me is that since we have leaped farther ahead, the software changes are enormous. Worse I find the help screens imprecise and frustrating as far as finding answers to specific questions. We bought two guides to OFFICE at Borders, an illustrated one from DK and a heavily textual one from SAMS Teach Yourself. The each have lousy indexes and so learning is a matter of trying everything, piecing it together, and trying to remember how something worked. I had a heck of a time setting up folders which seem essentially integral to the way work is organized but are phantoms in any of the help screens or guides. It’s easy when you finally figure it out, but it took hours and sleeping on it overnight to get there.

Now that we are at work on it, we love it. We can do simultaneous online work and talk on the phone at the same time. As I write this Pat is using the dialup to our old webmail, and I am using Charter to get to the same webmail, answering you and forwarding anything I want to keep to our new address.

Kristofer said that it would improve our lives. Likely so, but not without considerable effort. I repeatedly lost text in writing this and finally gave up trying to re-enter everything I said. I may get a new keyboard.