If you can’t watch this, your Internet service REALLY stinks:
I just got done reading a piece entitled “I Surrender Comcast” over on CrunchGear.
I can relate, because I’ve had a pretty volatile life with some of my tech products – namely the series of crappy Windows PC’s I had. There is nothing worse than when something you expect to “just work” doesn’t.
But Devin Coldewey’s rant about Comcast’s lousy (to him) Internet service has me thinking – I’ve had it pretty good with Time Warner.
I’ve been using Time Warner’s Roadrunner Internet service for about 10 years. I first got in bed with Time Warner in college after getting hooked on “Unreal Tournament.” The 300-millisecond ping times I was used to on dial-up AOL service didn’t do the trick for my gaming needs. So the installation man came and hooked me up, and my pings collapsed to under 50. Boom! Like that, I could actually snipe and get head shots!
And it wasn’t just about ping times – the service was fast, possibly because I lived on a block full of older people that didn’t have Internet Service. All I knew was, I was finally surfing the web at warp speed, something that wasn’t even possible on Brooklyn College’s volatile network.
I had the same results in at least four different locations in Brooklyn – the service has always been really fast, and more importantly, reliable. In 10 years of heavy use, I’ve had literally less than a dozen outages, and they were never for more than an hour or two. I’ve never suffered anything like an entire day without service. Once every couple of months I’ll lose my signal, but all I have to do is used the tried-and-true method of unplugging my modem and router, and plugging them back in.
Right now I’m on Time Warner’s $33 a month plan, and it’s pretty damn awesome. I’ve had zero trouble streaming HD video from Vimeo and Blip, and I even ordered a UFC event online once, and it ran silky-smooth.
So Mr. Coldewey, I’m sorry you’re having trouble with Comcast, and I don’t want to rub anyone’s face in my good fortune – but I’m loving my Time Warner Internet service. It just feels good when something works right!
But this leads into another reason I’m writing this: when it comes to ISP’s and phone companies, all you ever hear are complaints. Nobody brings up their good sevice – they only like to spew hate on the stuff that’s broken. I’m just trying to balance things out but giving out some well-deserved love!
A random, related note: I have noticed is that gaming over Xbox Live isn’t nearly as smooth as what I was used to 10 years ago with PC gaming over real servers. This peer-to-peer stuff just doesn’t work for me – it’s good, but not great for FPS games.
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