Not as fun as playing spy.

Payments of fire protection subscription double

I've actually had really good luck with Time Warner. About 6 years ago we had about 2-3/? mbps for $50 month now I have 15/1 mbps for $35 month.

I've been able to keep my DHCP ip for over a year (last major power outage) and the service is almost flawless (except for that DNS outage last week!). My only major complaint is the lackluster upstream. You can't even pay them for more! I've inquired about biz class road runner and it's actually more expensive AND slower!

I was also dual homed with Verizon DSL for awhile but I found the service to be more of a PITA then anything. My PPoE session would randomly drop under high loads which made the service more or less worthless. I'm considering trying it again. It's really fun to setup QoS with two pipes to keep my browsing/gaming/voip low latency while still seeding the latest OpenBSD release on BT ;)

Once 3G came to our area (FINALLY) I picked up a Verizon Wireless USB card. If you do any amount of traveling it literally pays for itself not having to buy airport or hotel wifi (which is usually very terrible).

My only major complaints over the last year are the lack of 3G coverage in random areas and the wacky NAT or something that they use. You have a public looking IP but your not actually connectible from the outside world. This is defiantly going to be a problem if you want to host any services from your card. I've never had any bandwidth problems, I don't use the card for any heavy lifting.

I can't confirm the ~100ms pings people here report, I seriously wonder if these people are getting paid to post here! You can pull down about 100k/sec sustained (JUST DON'T MOVE) but your always going to have latency problems.

I have a little script to ping the three most important things in the world.

1) Google (200-400ms)

2) My East Coast WoW server (300-400ms OR MORE!)

3) My Home Machine for SSH access (200-300ms)

Honestly, you could NEVER play a FPS from a VZW USB dongle. I've used 2 different cards (I don't remember the models) World of Warcraft is barely playable (It sucks when your questing and disconnects only to reconnect and find yourself dead.) I've experienced this on high end laptops, two different cards and about a zillion different locations.

In conclusion,

Verizon Wireless USB Cards are great if you want to surf the web, connect to a VPN, or check your e-mail. DO NOT expect to be able to play games without wanting to punch your screen. I can't comment on any other carrier yet. (I'm going to attempt to tether my iphone soon, just don't tell AT&T!)

I agree. I've also found wireless mice to feel inaccurate at times. Every time I sit down at a computer with a wireless mouse I feel like I'm fighting it to go where I want.

Quake 2 was easily the best FPS ever released. Several amazing mods like Action & WF gave me hours and hours of fun. I'd kill to be able to find a full Q2A or WF server now..

Yeah.. I'd be happy if the instructions were condensed onto 1 page instead of spread out over 3 pages. This is one of the most annoying trends today imo. Great for ad revenue, terrible to read.