V.92 modems

I'm suspecting that my current modem is dying and needs to be replaced. While checking out CompUSA they are selling modems that support the V.92 standard.

One feature that caught my eye was Modem on Hold, which if you have Call Waiting in your phone line you can accept an incoming call and still be on-line.

Has anyone had any experience with this feature?

I am also wondering if one can make an outgoing call while still being on-line?

Comments

Here's a simple solution...get broadband. A cable modem or DSL modem is what you should be looking at.

My .02 of course; you'll probably disagree with me. Anyway...

I have a dialup at home, and while I can't say it's perfect, I can say for a fact that it has never let me down so far. (I do know for a fact that there are people out there who have run into glitches with their DSL and RoadRunner connections that are far worse than what I've had with dialup.) If we're talking about convenience and ease, then of course it's feasible to go broadband - provided, of course, that you have compatible equipment.

(In other words, don't hate me because I run Win98 and a 56K modem on a processor that runs below 600.)

But the thing is, there are other factors to consider before buying a new dial-up modem. For one thing, the dial-up pool has been getting quite crowded lately, which is why a lot of users have been having log-on problems in the first place.

And sometimes it might not even be an issue of hardware or connections in the first place. In my case, when I first started having problems with my modem, I called Verizon Tech Support, who then went on to tell me that I needed a new modem. One thing led to another, which led to me erasing my entire hard drive and calling a computer repairman to my house. Said repairman then went on to reinstall my entire computer back to normal, after which we checked on my Verizon connection and found that it was behaving better than normal. That's when we both realized that my computer may or may not have been 1) infected by some sort of virus/worm or 2) overrun by downloads and cookies, both of which point to something I must have caught while surfing the Internet and I could never have figured out if I didn't end up reconfiguring my hard drive in the first place. (Moral of the story: It is never too late to download anti-virus software.)

That said, whatever it is, make sure you've checked everything there is to check before running out and buying a new modem.

I too run a Windows 98 system on a 500 MHz AMD K6 II processor. While my current modem is a V.90 56K internal it works if I am just doing email checking (mines is setup to dial-up, check email, transfer if there is any and then hang-up the phone. Wait about 20 minutes and then it dials again. This way I can get incoming calls and still get email in a timely manner).

If I do web surfing or check newsgroups, my modem craps out on me if I transfer around 2 to 6 Mbytes of information. Other times it just stays connect to my ISP but no information is transferred between my system and them.

Tech support at Lava.Net suggested I should replace my phone cables (kind of old anyway) and/or my modem (or drivers).

At $50 for an internal V.92 modem sounds like a good deal to me. At least the Modem on Hold sounds like a good feature for me (and I do have Call Waiting on my line anyway).

I run Windows XP with RoadRunner, and all I can say is my old dial-up from years ago was probably faster. Meanwhile hubby's Win98 runs like a charm.

Moral: XP+RR=not compatible.

Meanwhile I'm sitting pretty on RoadRunner with my PowerComputing Mac clone with G3 upgrade card and 112 MB of ram.

Anyway...

I did some Googling and managed to find this site. Hope that helps with your decision. According to it, the Modem-on-Hold feature (being able to make calls while online) is completely up to whether your ISP supports it and for how long.

Picked up a US Robotics Model 5699B Internal V.92 modem for around $50 at CompUSA a few days ago. Only installed on my system today.

At this point in time it's been on-line for about 30 minutes.

The new modem is really strange. Sometimes when I turn on the PC the modem doesn't get recongize and I have to reboot the PC or reinstall the driver. Other times it works okay when I start the PC up.

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