It’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, it’s .

Monday, October 30, 2000

It’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, it’s … it’s … broadband cable Internet and it’s here in Austin.

At peak speeds, cable Internet is more than 100 times faster than a connection via a phone line. Web pages appear in a flash, like they already were stored in the computer’s memory. Files that took minutes or hours to download over the phone line can arrive in mere seconds or minutes via cable.

Wayne Goodnature, owner of PST Computer, can’t say enough about the new technology.

"The speeds were seeing so far are fast, really fast and lightning fast – at least in comparison to an telephone modem," he said. "Basically it’s the difference between a Piper Cub airplane and what the astronauts fly to the moon in."

Although Charter Communications, the cable company that services the Austin area, actually offers the cable access to the Internet, Goodnature has been a part of introducing the new technology to Austin. PST Computer won the contract for the computer end of the installation process for Austin, Albert Lea and Owatonna.

Sherry Brown, office manager for Charter Communications, said the new service has been everything they hoped it would be. It took a year to upgrade the cable system in Austin so it could handle the two-way transmissions that are needed for the Internet. Charter split the city up into eight different sections to avoid a "pile-up" during peak periods of use.

Not everything has been perfect. Brown explained that with a system upgrade this large they expected to find a few pocket areas that needed "tweaking," but those have been very minor so far.

"It’s been really fun, it’s definitely a service people like," Brown said. "We’ve installed about 200 so far and I haven’t heard any complaints yet. Usually the first thing we hear from a customer is ‘wow.’"

Although enthusiastically received, the faster service also comes with a higher price tag. The monthly fee is $39.95 a month for Charter cable customers ($10 additional for non-customers) with a one-time installation fee of $49.95. Brown said there would soon be cable packages including the Internet service and there is a possibility of other upcoming specials that might decrease the cost of hookups.

Although the higher speed is the main reason people are switching to cable access, there are other advantages.

Seventh-grader Jesse Angell, a seventh-grade Internet whiz kid who has designed two Web sites so far, points out that the new service actually saves his family money because they don’t have to have a separate phone line for the computer anymore. For other families, it simply means they have access to their only phone line again, while the kids download music and information that formerly meant an ongoing busy signal.

Goodnature calls it "Internet with an attitude," and says PST has been averaging six to eight hookups a day for the last month or two.

"People are just fed up with the slow speeds and the hangups," Goodnature said, referring to the mysterious disconnections that occur from time to time as an analog surfer peruses the Internet.

"The phone system wasn’t really designed for data transmission – it was designed for voice."

On any computer the speed will be higher with cable access Internet, but Goodnature explained that the better the computer, the better the speed. He advised that weaker computers could handle the hookup, but results are best with more powerful computers.

For more information on the new Internet service, call Charter Communications at 437-6645.

What do you need to connect?

Austin Daily Herald

There are certain minimum requirements that a computer must meet – for the operating system, the central processing unit, the memory system and the disk space – in order to take advantage of the broadband cable Internet service offered by Charter Communications. These include:

Operating system

n For the operating system, the Windows minimum is Windows 95 or 98 or NT 4.0. The Macintosh minimum is OS 7.6.1 or higher.

CPU

n The central processing unit, or CPU, should be at least a Pentium equivalent for Windows, with the recommended system being a Pentium 166 equivalent or higher. Macintosh computers should be a PowerPC 601 at least, with a PowerPC 603 recommended.

Memory

n A total of 16 megabytes of RAM, or memory, is the minimum requirement for Windows, with 32 megabytes recommended. Macintosh computers have a minimum recommendation of 24 megabytes, with 32 megabytes the recommended number.

Disk space

n Disk space should be 125 megabytes for Windows and 50 megabytes for Macintosh.