 Review by jandz 
Posted: 331 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 2802 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Houston,Harris,TX
 $39 per month
 about 2 days
 "Faster than AT&T, almost zero downtime"
 "Newsgroups? Nah. Bandwidth limits? Check. Tech Support? Maybe."
 "It's better than AT&T for now. It's also better than Time Warner was."
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(ratings match consensus)
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This review is dated well after I actually got the service. We've used Comcast for about a year now. The only good point about waiting so long to review an ISP is that I generally have a decent idea on what I really do like and hate about them. First, the good news.
The installer did not have to do much to set us up. It was really mostly plug and play. He was on time and didn't make a huge mess. It also helps that it "just worked". I gave them decent ratings because it's been that way both times we've had Comcast installed. I don't remember the modem we got - some generic cable thing. It doesn't seem to matter one way or the other as it also "just works".
It's almost never down in my area. Maybe that's luck, maybe not. Our tv can go out but the internet stays strong. Speeds don't seem to fluctuate much. They do randomly increase the speeds which is nice except that it is very random and often with no announcement. It's fine for gaming (I did WoW for years in BGs and Arenas with not much lag to show for it) and ok for hardcore torrent raiders. They do offer tiers of speed but honestly - we're on the lowest one. The speeds there are fine for most of what I do.
Now the bad side. With that speed comes a mostly hidden and erratically enforced downloads cap. You might get a letter or you might not. They may randomly cancel you or not. For the record, I have never received one of these but fast Google searches should turn up plenty of them. The uptime itself is great and that's a good thing - their tech support is, as usual, completely clueless and often unable to help. I normally lie to them about being on a Mac as that fact seems to intimidate them into feeling like their little techie manual won't work on my machine. And then there's the newsgroup issue. They recently turned it off. Their server was awful to begin with so I don't miss it much. Should every ISP provide usenet access? I think so. I'm not asking them to host every group. I frequent some of the discussion ones, though, (no binaries) so it's a little annoying to remove a text based service that's useful for more than just piracy.
All of that said, it's a decent service. Time Warner was so bad before Comcast that this is almost (almost being emphasized) a very good thing. I still wish they were more upfront about where the cap is. I heard a rumor that they might be more forthcoming but I don't know if they ever were. I also wish they would offer the non-binary newsgroups as it seems to make little sense to me not to provide them. But overall, not bad for the money.
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