ISP Suggestions
 

At my house, we are switching to People PC because of AOL's rising cost. I was not consulted about this. I would like to know if this is a decent ISP or if there is something better (but cheap, because apparently, in value vs. performance, value wins) that we can switch to at a later date.

Anything is better than AOL, so you should be pretty happy to be getting something else.

Do you have the ability to switch to your local cable service? It would be well worth the extra cost, I guarantee.

Right now I bagged a $19.99 a month for 6 months deal for Comcast (from my local Best Buy). My uncle's never been done wrong by Comcast internet (don't even mention AOL to him) and has rock solid speed. Though as soon a Verizon's FiOS comes in (with 15Mb download and 2Mb upload for 44.95 a month), I might jump ship.

Who the hell offers bandwidth like 15Mb/2Mb? How is that even possible at such a low price? I've seen connections at 3Mb/768Kb that cost just as much (if not more).

It's a competition thing (they want to one-up Comcast), Oregon invested billions in a fiber optic line and the reward is dirt cheap Fiber Optic internet service. Remeber the far east offers internet faster than Comcast for much cheaper prices (mainly because of government support).

In two years, you will be laughing at people who are still stuck with lowly 15Mb download connections, once most areas are offering 30Mb+. However right now I am crying that I only have a 3Mb download connection, but it is free so I can't really complain too much, but I can surely be jealous of a 15Mb.

Really 3Mb isn't all that bad, that turns out being 366.21KBps or 21.46MB every minute. I'm more concerned about upstream speeds, which generally are much slower than downstream speeds. With 30Mbps you could stream DVD quality Mpeg-2 video (and download a Blu-Ray DVD at near-realtime speeds), somewhat superflous if you ask me (right now though, Verizon FiOS offers 30Mbps/5Mbps for a measly $180 a month, too bad it's not in my town yet).

Hey, 3Mbps is nice. I've got 1.5. But, since I just came from dialup, it's so nice by contrast XD (Oh yeah, and I don't have to pay for it).