 Review by fatness 
UPDATED: 159 days ago
member for 9 years, 6051 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 fishing
 $49 per month (6 month contract)
 about 28 days
 Verizon
 "Communicated well, installed quickly, works fine."
 "None yet, still waiting for them."
 "Happy Camper."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I got bounced from my free ISP, so rather than find a pay dial-up service to go with my second phone line, I decided to get DSL through Mindspring/Earthlink, eliminate the second phone line, and pay about the same.
Mindspring/Earthlink told me our line was OK for DSL service, I signed up. 2 1/2 weeks later Verizon did their work on the line up to the house. A week after that Covad (WHO COMMUNICATED FREQUENTLY AND VERY WELL BY THE WAY----no I don't work for them) installed the modem etc, and we were up and running.
I am still waiting for the problems to start, but none have. Always connected, read tons of useful info here on DSL Reports and tweaked (I used to think that was a sexual term) my system a little to get it running faster.
Earthlink support is a longer wait and less knowledgeable than Mindspring support, but I haven't needed them since installation 3 weeks ago.
If things continue well I will update, and if things go south I will update. No complaints, and I love DSL Reports.
DATA: ordered whatever speed was offered (I believe it was 192/192, don't remember) for $ 49.95/mo. plus free modem and install; I get 240/270 avg. on tests. Home equipment is an HP Pavilion 8560C. PPPoE. Other bad experiences: none. Other good experiences: my dog is licking my hannnnnnd.
I got Mindspring /Earthlink DSL on Nov. 1, and kept having problems with blue-screening-------------the monitor would click, and the entire computer would lock up. Talked to Mindspring Tech Support and they suggested uninstalling EnterNet and installing WinPoet, which I did. It ran great the first day, slow the second day, and stopped cold the third day. I kept getting the "Error 629--The port was disconnected by the remote machine". Tech Support sent me the instructions for how to deal with Error 629 and what it meant. I HAVE SAVED THESE INSTRUCTIONS----E-MAIL ME IF YOU NEED THEM. I followed the instructions, screwed it up the first time, got it right the second time, and my connection is much better. No more blue-screening, always on, no outages. It seems I hadn't completely uninstalled Enternet stuff, and had also uninstalled and reinstalled Winpoet in an attempt to fix things. There were registry entries and adapters and all sorts of other stuff I had left on my machine which was interfering with WinPoet installing cleanly and running.
My speeds vary widely. In the AM they are around 1100kbs, and every evening they are between 300-400kbs. I don't know why this is, and I'll probably root through DSLReports to find ideas. There is a lot of help here. Even at the slower speeds the performance is fine for me, but I want the best I can get. I also constantly have a 4% packet loss on the last hop of the West Coast Line Quality Test. Will try to find out more about this. Still pretty damn satisfied. It is fast and it is always on, and Earthlink/Mindspring helped me with my problems.
DATA: ordered whatever speed was offered (I believe it was 1.3/384, don't remember) for $ 49.95/mo. plus free modem and install; I now get 360/270 avg. in evenings and 1100/350 avg. in morning on tests. Home equipment is an HP Pavilion 8560C. PPPoE. Other bad experiences: EnterNet software failed. WinPoet failed until I installed it right. Other good experiences: too graphic to describe here.
UPDATE: April 20, 2001: Still going strong. Speeds constantly around 1200/300, with pings in mid 20's. Love it.
note: I'm a moderator here at DSLR/BBR, but that doesn't make this review any more or less valuable than anyone else's review.
Updated January 25, 2003: I haven't updated my review in a ong time because: it still works just fine. I've been without service maybe 3 hours during the whole last year, and considering what other people go through with other ISP's, I have no complaints about that. Speeds still run about 1310 down and 300 up, and my pings seem to have stayed steady in the upper teens when I run a traceroute, and in the low 30's when I run a Line Quality test at BBR. The few times I've needed help with Covad's end of the service, I've just e-mailed the Level 2 Tech at Mindspring and it has been taken care of by getting Covad to reprovision my line. I'm not saying this is the best service around, or the fastest, but I'll be damned if I have any complaints about it. $49.95 a month is the current rate. I'm satisfied.
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