It has become apparent that my modem is about to give up the ghost. I keep getting booted offline after no more than 10-15 minutes. This does not happen while using my laptop even though I am using the same phone line and ISP. Other options (DSL - too expensive; cable - Comcast is the only provider and, since this isn’t the pit, I’ll leave at that) are not feasible. Therefore, I must get a regular modem.
Any recommendations? I’d prefer to get an internal versus external, unless there’s a major difference.
Hm. They’re getting harder to find these days. USRobotics is usually pretty good, if a bit pricy. I’ve had no problems with Xoom, either, which tend to be cheaper, but your mileage may vary–I’ve heard horror stories about them, even if my experience doesn’t match. The internal ISA Xoom modem was a thing of beauty. I actually managed to outperform some of my friends’ single line ISDN connections with it and it would never drop. My external Xoom wasn’t as good, although it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination bad.
Cardinal also put out a decent modem, back in the day.
Of course, I use DSL these days, so it’s all a moot point for me. 
I’d pick up a PCI v.92 modem. V.92 is probably not implemented by your ISP, but a v.92 modem is backwards compatible with v.90, and will give you a nice speed boost if your ISP ever upgrades. Is compatibility with other operating systems important? If so, checkout linmodems.org. That site will tell you which winmodem chipsets are compatible with Linux. If you’ll only be using the modem in windows, then you can really go with any model. I’ve had good luck with Zoom (Xoom?) modems, myself.
I have an ActionTec call-waiting modem, but I don’t have extensive experience with it. It came with my computer, but it wasn’t long before I switched over to broadband. I only used it for a couple of weeks, but the call-waiting feature of the modem was quite useful, because we only have one phone line.
You could ask WSLer about it… (ducks and runs)
But seriously,
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Are you sure it’s your modem, and not your ISP? Earthlink sometimes will log me off every 15 minutes without fail, then at other times let it go for a half hour. (I realize the laptop “working” suggests this isn’t so, but the ISP may be doing something tricky with logging people off who are using certain types of data with certain frequency.)
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You can stop an ISP from logging you off by downloading a huge file in the background (like the IE update from Microsoft). If you are logged off in the midst of a single file’s download, read further.
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Are you sure your phone cord / phone line is undamaged?
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For simplicity, to replace a modem, buy from the manufacturer who sold you the computer. Least chance of problems.
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I’ve got an Ambient HaM Data FAX Voice, and have had absolutely zero problem with it.
My employer has put some serious time and money into comparing the performance and reliability of different modems. Pretty much everyone involved with this testing (myself included) would recommend US Robotics without a second thought. It really is as good as you can get.
My employer has put some serious time and money into comparing the performance and reliability of different modems. Pretty much everyone involved with this testing (myself included) would recommend US Robotics without a second thought. It really is as good as you can get.
I’ve been checking around and it looks like US Robotics is the favored one. Right now, everything is stable. Looking back, it seems that the problems generally happen on the weekend. I use AOL (yeah, yeah, they suck and all that), and this past weekend I would get connect rates as low as 1200bps (I don’t think so, I tried again). Today, I’m back up in the 40000+ range. I don’t do a lot of downloading, so turbocharged speed isn’t vitally important.
I should say, I don’t mean to imply that my employer officially endorses US Robotics. That’s just the leader in our tests.
Note that there are “Winmodems” (which is actually a USR trademark, but many co.s make similar ones) and Real Modems.
Get a Real Modem. I don’t care what OS you use, your processor speed, etc. If the box says you have to have MS windows XXX or a good Pentium+ processor, do not buy it. Note that this excludes the $20 BestBuy crap.
USRs (3comm) are great as alot of ISPs support them.
Sounds more like your phone jack has crud on it as it can cause that to happen too.
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- You want a USR hardware modem. There’s at least one internal one made (the “Gaming” modem) but the rest are external ones that hook onto a serial port. -Don’t buy a USB one, either-- it’s not the same thing.
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- A USR external serial-port hardware modem will cost you ~$100-$120 anywhere you go, depending on the exact model.
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This is an excellent recommendation. Winmodems keep all of their settings in the registry, so if anything should happen to mung up that part of the registry, your modem will stop working.
If you do replace the modem you should use a hard modem. External modems are hardware controlled and real easy to install but they do take up deskspace. Have you tried un-installing the modem and rebooting to have the OS find and then re-install the drivers? You might also see if there are updated drivers for your modem on the manufactuers site and install them.Heck it can’t hurt.
Here is a link to a great online retailer