Dang. I just downloaded BeOS 5.0 (42 meg) in less than 2.5 minutes.
Wow.
I love mine too - most of the time… There are certain times when it takes forever for any page to open - generally from after school to maybe 7 PM. But early in the morning when I’m playing hooky - WAHOO!!!
So far, I haven’t noticed a big slowdown. The straight dope loads slightly faster, overall. 
But these downloads… Wow. It’s like I’m searching for big things to download.
I just gave up my cable modem (30 day free trial) because it was not faster than dialup. The only things it did better on were downloading files, which I seldom do, and movie “news clips” that were not worth watching. Just a head reading you the single headline and stopping. They have technology, but it’s not where I need it.
I love my cable modem, too. There’s a lot of bickering that happens between the cable modem folks and the DSL proponents, but in my town, the DSL service is pure, 100% crap and the cable modem service kicks mucho ass. I’m not just a mindless web browser, either - I telecommute, and do things like run terminal sessions over my internet link, so even minor lag is REALLY annoying. My cable connection almost never lags noticably. I get sub-100ms round-trip times between me (in Massachusetts) and my employer (in Florida). Game play is good, too.
Downloading on your high-speed internet connection, be it cable, DSL, or other, can be more efficient with the use of programs like Download Accelerator, which makes multiple connections to a web or ftp server and downloads over all of them simultaneously. I frequently max out my connection when downloading large files that way. Also, if Download Accelerator can find mirror sites for the file you’re downloading, it’ll pull from the mirrors, too. It’s just too cool.
I can’t BELIEVE these people who come along and say that they can’t see any significant difference between dialup and cable modem speeds. They must read a lot of boring-ass, mostly-text web sites and not much else. For those of us who actually use our computers for more than reading the daily news and checking e-mail, high-speed internet access is a way of life.
Thats awsome speed! Good for you!
xDSL lover checking in. The best speeds I usually get are about 160KB per/sec with my 1.5MBit ADSL line.
I download the 56MB Flanker 2.5 upgrade in 6 minutes flat. That about as good as I can get…and I am pretty happy with that too