Hi, Before I bought a performance pro modem, I used a cheap software modem that came with my computer. Using toast's text speed test: http://toast.net/performance/ I got a score of 115 consistenly. With the peformance pro modem, I only get a score of 95, why is the more expensive modem slower?! I thought hardware modem were faster than software modems! Should I buy another software or win modem? Thanks, Jonathan

All modems are hardware. Do you mean the built in modem on the PC? That is still hardware but on-board. No on-board modems are just as fast as external or PCI modems. Just got to have the latest drivers for whatever modem you use. <===Lefty=== AMD 64 3200+ 200 GB WD Geforce 5500FX 256 MB 512 MB Ram Needs more. Windows XP

Is your hardware modem internal or external? If it's internal, is it an ISA modem? There are very few PCI "true hardware" modems & they were (are) expensive. There are some Winmodems that have an on-board DSP (Digital Signal Processor)...they fall somewhere in between the cheap software modems & true hardware modems. I've seen a noticeable improvement since switching to an external 56k serial port modem. Have you tried experimenting with different drivers (if you can find any)? ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP2

The winmodem that I used, that worked great, was a software modem, a pci card, not an onboard modem. The hardware modem I have now is a US Robotics Performance pro modem: http://www.usr.com/products/home/home-product.asp?sku=USR5610B Not only is the hardware modem slower, but when I first connect, it will load pages and download files, but after a few minutes it stops working. (if I reconnect it will work again for a few minutes) The software modem I had never stopped working. I have tried updating the driver for the USR modem, but it doesn't help. I have tried two different external modems also, a US Robotics and a Zoom, but neither as well as the software modem. Jonathan

""All modems are hardware."" That's not what he means. The common term that has come to play is a "hardware" modem versus a "software" or a so called "winmodem" which means that some of the hardware/firmware is missing, and is made up for in software. I had the same experience. I now am on high speed cable, but here's what I had for experience, on a "fairly" good phone line: Had two external modems, one gave trouble, got a differnt brand, and had pretty good luck, but a PCMCIA card modem in one of my laptops was MUCH slower. THEN I got a new motherboard, with an onboard "software" or "winmodem" believe it or not, it had much better "real" download performance than either of my previous hardware modems. I came to the same conclusion---that the DSP noise suppression in the "soft" modem----in this case---simply worked better. With today's faster processors, and typically more memory--if it works, I wouldn't worry about it.

Name, thanks for the info. I just ordered a modem from Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16825130005