My friend has a dell PC, with onboard modem on the mobo. His internet is pretty slow, and im wondering, will a V.92 PCI modem help his internet connection speed up? My Rig: 1040Mhz Pentium 3 OC'd at 1.2Ghz Aopen MX3WPRO-E mobo Intel 810 chipset Onboard Graphics Not sure how many MB 128mb RAM 120GB Maxtor Hard Drive My Old Rig: AMD K6 400Mhz

I doubt it.

if he has a serial com port, get a external us robotics 56k sportster, widely avialable on ebay for $20. I get pretty good dailup performance with processors as low as PII 300. I believe there is also a USB version (probably cost more). larry

The difference in performance between one modem and the next as far as connection speeds go is very small. Internet connection speed is only as good as the weakest link in the chain and the weakest link as far as dial-up is concerned is the copper wire between you and the telephone company. Give your telephone company a call and ask them to check the line out. If it is excessively noisy or you live a long way from the exchange, then that will effect connection speed. Noisy lines can be repaired, distance you are stuck with unless you move house. Stuart

I don't believe the Dell has it on the mobo. It is probably a cheap PCI card like what you are planning to buy. Check the phone lines. You can avoid many of these Windows problems with Linux. Linspire eases the transition for new users

Alright, thanks My Rig: 1040Mhz Pentium 3 OC'd at 1.2Ghz Aopen MX3WPRO-E mobo Intel 810 chipset Onboard Graphics Not sure how many MB 128mb RAM 120GB Maxtor Hard Drive My Old Rig: AMD K6 400Mhz

Stuart wrote: > The difference in performance between one > modem and the next as far as connection > speeds go is very small. A good modem can sometimes make a big difference in performance. Five years ago I bought a US Robotics Performance Pro PCI modem. Every other internal modem I have compared it to since were left in the dust. With the Performance Pro I might get a DL rate of 4.5 KB/sec compared to 3.5 KB/sec for the others. Of course that is only my experience. Every phone line is plagued by different kinds of interference. Different modems handle specific kinds better or worse than others. The only way to find out is to try a better modem. These days the best are either hardware PCI modems or external modems. External one are probably more widely available since good PCI ones like the Performance Pro are not only more expensive but a lot harder to find. Another thing to consider is that the usual cheap modems have the computer CPU do most of the work. Good hardware (external or internal) do most of the work themselves. Burdening the CPU with modem work was more of a problem with slower CPUs but even with the current fast CPUs the overall perforance of cheap modem is below that of a good one.