I have TWC (because it is them or nothing). I could buy a higher tier but there is this little issue beyond the price. They do not guarantee that you will get higher speeds. Just that they will be available to you. Since I live kinda in the boonies (on a main road hence why I can even get cable internet) I will never see any speeds higher than what I get. So why should I go from paying $55 a month to something more for the exact same service as I am getting today. If they would guarantee that you got the speeds that you actually paid for I take bets there would be more demand for their higher tiers. I would consider paying more if I could get faster than what I get today all the time. In short as everyone has said this is just an lame excuse. They won't make guarantees because they are afraid of being held to them and losing money. They won't offer more competitive pricing because why compete when you are a local monopoly? In the end it will take Google or other players coming in to force them to change. The only other option is local municipalities trying to compete but TWC and the other cable/telephone companies are lobbying so hard many areas and states have laws that prevent that if they offer service to 1 house in an entire zip code.

I have to agree with pay being a huge factor. I've turned down a number of offers this year and know of others who have done the same because we aren't willing to take a massive pay cut in what is supposed to be a step up. Companies wrongly believe high unemployment means they can offer next to nothing. Until companies wake up to the reality that skilled labor is not having an issue with unemployment, we are having an issue with being overworked and miserable because operations have been expanded but no staff has been added to match that for years. That is why most of us look.

The biggest reasons the majority of XP installs are still out there are crappy software in the workplace that the vendors won't even support you if you try and upgrade to anything above XP/2003. Seriously it is sad. They also are likely to require to run IE6 or maybe 7 is you are really lucky. We have had software vendors even try to tell us that they only support SQL2000 (which has been unsupported by MS for a while now) even though their company policy is to not support anything that the original vendor does not. You have management who refuses to listen to their people. All they want is someone to blame should anything go wrong. Instead of insisting with only going with vendors that can support the latest things. Until the software vendors start supporting the later versions of the OS (even if they keep supporting XP, just support 7 as well) most won't move. And users are dumb. If they see that work can't upgrade they'll think they shouldn't upgrade at home either. After all work has a IT dept. They know next to nothing.

I find the 30gb or more being considered too heavy to provide meaningful data a little absurd. Hell these days with netflix instant watch it isn't hard for most people to hit that. And throw in the fact that most people who know what their usage actually is won't be the ones volunteering for this. Those of us techies use too much bandwidth, could care less about a "free router" since I'm sure we all have 1 (if not more sitting in a closet somewhere) and went to some lengths researching which one to get and those who fit under that cap wouldn't even know how to figure out their bandwidth usages and might not even know what a router is so why should they get excited about a free one. Hell how many people even know what the advertised speeds for their ISP really is? For most of us the choice is dial up or 1 high speed option. No choice of DSL or cable. I can get cable and that is it. If they really want this to work they need to figure out a better set of ideas to motivate people to participate and not force out the most likely people to be interested.

I use this as well. When it came out the reviews were great so I gave it a go. No system performance issues. So I am happy with it.

There is a big difference between being an admin for a development department and for an organization of users who can barely turn there computer on and off each day. In your case you develop software so you know something about what you are doing (at least I hope but I have seen developers who can program well but can't manage an OS to save their life). You still should give some credit to your admins. If they are decent they know how the system works and may give you a good reason why the change you want made is not a good idea. Justification should go both ways. But in cases where you only support users there are a lot of idiotic users who tell us to do even dumber things. For example we have been told to turn off all security measures because it is slowing everyone down but be sure to lock everything down because we don't want just anyone looking at confidential information such as upper management salary information. This is from the same member of upper management. A good admin doesn't just do what they are told. They should be smart enough to know when it is a good idea and when to ask more questions or just flat out say no because it is stupid beyond belief.

Seriously since this is ask slashdot lets treat it is a request from a customer. Bounce it back to the helpdesk for not asking them to clarify and having no idea what is even being asked for. IT never has been glorious. In most places we are at best tolerated because no business/organization/whatever can survive without us. Upper management who think their monitor is their computer expect you to wave your magic wand and make whatever absurd idea they have work. And you have to bust your ass to make it happen. People get into this field for one of 2 reasons. 1. They think they'll make a lot of money - Typically they have no drive to learn the latest and greatest and get annoyed that you expect them to actually know something. These people are almost always destined for failure or management. 2. You actually like the work - Typically would be programming or playing with the latest OS or or hardware whether they had a job in the field or not. These people will either get lucky and be allowed to do the work they love or more likely have to wade through the muck created by management and deal with or work around those in the field for reason 1. Usually wise asses with twisted senses of humor. It helps keep us out of the psych wards!

K-12 is a joke in this country at the moment. Things like "No child Left Behind" and other such programs that focus on the lowest wrung have actually hurt the upper rungs. What we need is a system that is flexible enough to help those that are struggling but also to help those that need a challenge.

I think it needs to be an option in high school. That means having a teacher on staff, if only one, certified to teach it.

As for education for everyone, until the teachers are educated about the basics of computers it is hard to teach everyone anything. I know a lot of teachers don't know the difference between an operating system and a program. I think fundementally computers have evolved faster than our education system can handle. But that is a culture thing. A lot of teachers don't think they need to be constantly learning. I had an economics teacher in the late 90's who kept talking about how they did things in the Soviet Union. He got really pissed when I pointed out that the Soviet Union didn't exist anymore and they never really did things the way he said, which was theoretical communism. Teachers like IT professionals (well most of us) need to start realizing they need to be constantly learning.