I miss my cable connection!

[jeaniesa]

I've been out of touch the past few days since I got caught in the Excite@Home/AT&T fiasco. I've been without my usual internet access since Saturday and "borrowing" my relatives AOL accounts to log on - but it isn't the same! Most people affected are either already hooked back up to an AT&T network or will be by tomorrow. Unfortunately, my town is one of the few that will be a "few weeks" before everything is restored because AT&T has to build servers for this area. I can't believe how much I've come to rely on high-speed internet access!

Meanwhile, I've installed a new BIOS chip so that I can install a new 60G hard drive. (My old BIOS wouldn't support the large drive.) Took me forever to get my system back to normal after installing the new chip - conflicting IRQs. I'm about ready to install the new disk, but am trying to decide if I want to partition it or not. I'm assuming at least some of you have large disks - what have you done in terms of partitioning (if anything) and why?

Thanks, Jeanie

[cendres]

I can't help you out on your harddrive questions, but I sure can relate on your feelings toward not having your cable modem.

Ours was only out for 4 days and it drove me nuts. You will end up having a new email address and if you had utilized any of @homes personal website space you will have a new address and have to set up a new account and re-ftp everything. Also if you we're an amature such as myself, and mistakenly gave any of your web pages or images on your website file names that had spaces such as "new photos.htm" the new ftp site will not accept that. @homes did, and somehow converted it.

In short it has been a pain in the @#@. AT@T is giving 2 free days for every day out. Big deal. It has created a mess for me far worse than the stinking 8 days of credit I am going to receive.
I sure am glad I am not a small business using this service. Can you tell I am venting a little bit?

One final thing to be carefull about. When you go and notify everyone on your address book that your email has changed, prior to, make sure you go into your identies section of your mail program and change your email address there. I originally just changed the pop and smpt server addresses which allowed me to get mail at the new address, but when I went to send the announcement, it still had my old address as the sender. Thus anyone who "added sender to address book" just added my old address, even though the mail was sent through the new email account.

Tough lessons learned on my part. Best of luck in the conversion, and I hope you get your harddrive situation worked out - Carl

[jeaniesa]

Originally posted by cendres
AT@T is giving 2 free days for every day out. Big deal. It has created a mess for me far worse than the stinking 8 days of credit I am going to receive... Can you tell I am venting a little bit?

Vent all you want! I too feel that the 2 free days for every day out can't begin to "repay" the havoc this is wreaking. I swear if I had another choice I'd take it in a minute, but we can't get DSL out where I am and AT&T is the only choice for cable, so we're either stuck waiting it out - or stuck going back to dial-up which I don't even want to think about after having had cable for a year. :

The thing that really pisses me off is that the other cable companies seemed to be able to strike a 3-month agreement with Excite allowing them time to set up their networks without having to disrupt customers' service. But not AT&T! ARGH!!!

Venting too, Jeanie

[kathleen]

hey jeanie,

have no words of computerly wisdom but did want you to know i noticed you were missing and missed you.

you had a big chance to use and missed it (what a refreshing forum where no one hardly feels ) but thanks for letting the bat out.

[chris h]

J,

I'm always interested in others misfortunes what happened with Excite@Home/AT&T fiasco ? Internet providers are falling like leaves over here.

[jeaniesa]

Hey Kathleen, Thanks for letting me know I was missed. Unfortunately, isn't quite strong enough for how I've been feeling.

Chris, Excite@Home is/was the underlying server for the big cable companies offering cable internet service. Cable provides high-speed internet access, different from DSL which isn't even an option for us because the phone lines where I live can barely handle 26K (which is why we decided to go with a cable modem in the first place.)

Anyway, Excite@Home filed for bankrupty claiming that they were losing $6M per week providing their service to the cable companies with the agreements in the current contract. The bankruptcy judge said that this was too great a burden for them to handle, so allowed them to terminate service with any cable companies who did not agree to pay them more money. I think (but I'm not sure) that all of the cable companies except AT&T signed a temporary 3-month agreement with Excite to continue service (at a higher rate) for their customers until they're able to find their own solutions. AT&T on the other hand tried to buy Excite outright, but Excite rejected their bid and since talks broke down, no other agreements were signed, leaving all of the AT&T customers without service once Excite cut off early Saturday morning. AT&T has been building their own network and has been switching almost all of their customers over to that network over the past week. Unfortunately, Fort Collins where I live is one of the few areas where there is no AT&T network yet, so they have to build it. As of yesterday, they were saying it would be a few weeks. Today's paper said that Qwest has agreed to sell AT&T a fiber-optic line for Fort Collins access, so we may have service back by Sunday. (I'll believe it when I see it.)

Even with restored service, it's still a pain in the butt, because our e-mail addresses will change (from @home.com to @attbi.com). Thus, we have to change all of the lists we're subscribed to as well as all of the websites where we've "registered." (I don't even know if I can remember all of them! ) URL's for home webpages change as well. I've switched my most important lists and registrations over to my yahoo accounts and I'm thinking I'm just going to keep them that way! I just don't trust AT&T.

Jeanie

[chris h]

J

We have cable supply in the village but I'm too far off the road to try it out. I take it that cable is much faster than a modem/phone connection ?

[thomasgeorge]

Wow!! Makes me appreciate the old two cylinder rope start system we have up here! High level maintainance consists of replacing the string that runs out to the road and into the great electronic highway! Good luck J., Tom

[DJ Dubovsky]

Jeanie
Sorry about all the troubles you are having. (Sympathetic smilie goes here) I know how frustrated I got for loosing our connection for just one day much less several weeks. When these companies have a monopoly in an area they can do as they please because you don't have the option of going to a competitor where as larger areas the current customers can and will go elsewhere. So they ususally get fixed first. It's one of the drawbacks for living in those beautiful but rural areas I guess.

We just switched to DSL and I am amazed at how much faster it was than our 56k modem connection which never seemed to run at 56k anyway. I think it has to be about 10 times as fast. Things that take an hour to download via 56k modem would take about 10 minutes DSL. I'm not sure what the speed of cable is but I hear it's real fast also.

I also had to go through my site registrations and figure out which ones were a registered site and what password I used. Then I had to send out all my e-mail notices to family and friends etc. Hopefully you do this once and you won't have to do it again soon but it might be a good idea to make a note of the sites you go to and what your passwords are incase this happens again down the road. At anyrate, glad you were able to visit us even if it wasn't as often as you normally would.
DJ

[chris h]

If you use Explorers import/export facility to put your favourites and cookies on a CDr or some other sort of media the stress thats avoided will put ten years on your lives or am I preaching to the converted ?

[Paul Rupp]

Jeanie,

Sorry to hear that you are going to be "down and out" for that long. Hope that Quest and AT&T get together on the fiber in your area.

One good thing (sort of) is that AT&T upped the speed of the cable downloads to a full 1.5Mbps (T1 or better). I have AT&T (Ex-excite) and was fortunate enough to have it back up withen 2 days. I have run speed tests on the "new" service and can say that is IS faster then a T1 and much faster then it used to be.

Hopefully AT&T will fix the other problems, they like to change the DHCP numbers (causes you to be directed back to there transition page) so that you have to reboot in order to get your PC to talk to the modem correctly.

I have been on the phone with there top level (althought they still didn't know much, new crew) support and was told that the "bumps" and "errors" would be fixed ASAP. It is a MINOR annoyance. I just restart my router and I am up and running.

Hope your service is back and up to speed soon.

Paul Rupp

[Hankster65]

Jeanie,

Just my opinion...

The only time I've ever partitioned a drive (regardless of size) is when I've wanted to run more than one operating system on it. Definitely not a common occurence. Unless you have need of that, multiple partitions have always seemed like an unnecessary aggravation to me...and one that you live with for a long, long time.

[However, it is possible to change the partitioning at a later date with a neat little program called Partition Magic. Not sure where you get it or how much it costs. Best just to avoid the whole thing, though.]

[Ed_L]

Jeanie,

Sorry to hear about all of your problems with AT&T. That sounds like a real nightmare! Like Tom, I'm counting my blessings with a dial-up connection. Hope you're back up and running real soon.

Ed

[CJ Swartz]

Jeanie,

So sorry for your headache of a problem!
I've gone thru some of the headaches of resetting email, etc. and it sure is one of the worst parts of computing.

In our area, the @Home cable company was able to make a deal to keep customers connected. I've been thinking of getting myself cable access for Christmas, and am more encouraged to do so after hearing how much you miss it. My area isn't covered by the @Home contractor, but there is a small cable company that has their own system. I've been using them for TV cable access successfully for over a year, so I guess I'll give them a try.

Doug recently referred to partitioning as "for serious techies". I'd ask him if he's done it before.

[Doug Nelson]

Someone start a partitioning thread over in the hardware forum with specific questions and I'll do what I can.