Ilsa, I didnt get your email because Gardenweb wasn't allowing me to change my expired address. Email me at la_raspberry@yahoo.com or hotmail.com :D I am currently hooked up as of this morning using my phone as modem!! Much better indeed! Webkat,we are rural here too about 33 miles from the Spokane city line. On dial up we could only connect at 28.8 with a 56k modem...slower than all get-out. We had cable at one time, but even their cable kept getting blown down from the pole. Since their company is located in Idaho it a pain in the you know what to get them up here in reasonable time. Sprint service is the ONLY cell company that gets good service up here; never had a dropped signal. Funny Verizon is our main landline company yet forget about cell service!! Go figure. My new phone is a Sprint Power Vision Motorazr (Motorola)V3m Red. Cool thing too is that this USB connection also acts as a battery charger while I hook up LOL!! SWEET! Vera

yesican, The "numbers" on your computer are all good, and I assume you're using XP Home for your operating system. The only improvement you may want to consider is upgrading your RAM to 512 Mbytes or even 1 GBbyte. This will not been seen/felt, however, doing email/web browsing. If you're doing hi-tech "gaming" and graphics and/or you keep a lot of process up at the same time, you'll benefit from additional memory. I did not intend to imply that dsl would not increase you data transfer rate with the ISP (AOL or whoever), I said that may not be your total problem. You've got plenty of computer power, so I again suggest you go online and do web browse to anything big, say a news story from the AOL home page, then click on it and bring up your data (dial-up) status and see if data if smoothly flowing. If is is not, then dsl will not be a "total" fix. And too, what is your dial up data speed? The dial-up status will show you that too, it is in the top portion of the display. Looking I see mine is now running at 46.6 Kbps, down from the usual 52.0 Kbps, but I'm on a different phone line than normal. As noted just above, the speed depends a lot on the condition of the phone wire all the way to the central office and the distance, I am about 5 miles form the telephone office and last time I checked they were not providing dsl service to my location. I haven't checked lately and technology keeps improving, but being at or past the maximum distance would put my service at the lower level of the offered service. Speaking of dish/satellite t.v. are your happy with the t.v. service? I'm thinking about dropping my cable t.v. (Patriot Media) because I consider it overpriced. Some have told me satellite t.v. doesn't work in heavy weather: rain for example. What's your experience?

Dahlia - I use satellite internet (WildBlue - through Dish Network) and it is OK. It was my only option other than dialup. Kids needed a faster connection due to online classes, so I upgraded to the mid level WildBlue package. Be prepared for a large up front fee (I went with WildBlue because it didn't have that large fee and free activation at the time - I am not sure about now) All satellite internet providers have a usage cap. It is called FAP or Fair Access Policy. It limits how much data you can upload or download. Hughes has a daily cap. WildBlue has a rolling 30 day cap. Once you hit your cap, the speed gets throttled back to basically dialup speed or lower. If it is just you and you are not a heavy user - you will never notice. You will NOT be able to stream video (Netflix, etc.) and you will not be able to do a lot of YouTube watching, etc. - but some. It is noticeably better than dialup - but it is 3X the cost for me. You will probably have to commit to a 2 year contract also. Make sure you know up front what you are getting.

I have no opinion on McAfee having never used it. Read plenty of downside comments of course. Regarding anti virus I use AntiVir and Avast, one on each of my 2 main machines. I had been an AVG fan for years till version 8 appeared, it is still on one computer and running with no problems but removed from the other 2. On the firewall Zonealarm has been around forever providing a good free service. Recently I moved away as I had conflicts that I felt were induced by Zonealarm and now use PC Tools Firewall Plus, a free program. Anti malware, I use the 3 you mention plus Threatfire on one machine as it was offered bundled with the PC Tools firewall. I use one or 2 of these these every couple of weeks being sure to update the definitions before I run a scan. I have no particular preference. Spywareblaster runs in the background of course and only needs updating.