I've been hunting for a good network-attached storage device for my home wireless network for several years. I've come close to buying one several times (though there haven't been many from which to choose), but always ended up deciding not to because of cost and poor integration with my Mac.
I was therefore very excited to learn about Apple's new Time Capsule. Time Capsule doubles as a wireless router and network-attached storage. Once you have it set up, it automatically backs up your hard drive using Mac OS X's Time Machine software.
By automatically, I do mean "automatically." It is the most seamless, easy to use backup system I've ever seen. At $299 (for the 500GB version) it's not cheap, but considering that you get a great a rock-solid wireless router along with a large hard drive for that price, it's definitely worth it.
... Read moreVonage narrowed its loss this past quarter, but its customers are cutting their own losses with the struggling VOIP provider. I should know. I dumped Vonage two months ago and will never go back. Its service was terrible, both the customer support and the technology.
I'm with Comcast now for its Digital Voice offering and it's better (which is perhaps not surprising since Comcast intentionally hurts rival services on its network to preserve its own services). My problem now is that the Comcast VOIP boxes causes my wireless router to reset several times per day. Very, very aggravating.
The most surprising thing in all of this is how much better Skype is than either Vonage or Comcast Digital Voice.
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As a Comcast customer, I was happy to read that it's planning to roll out 160 Mbps Internet service in 2008. I'm not expecting much, however. I currently pay extra to Comcast to get 8 Mbps service...and I routinely get closer to 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps, tops.
So while Comcast can talk up 160 Mbps, I won't hold my breath. At its current ratio of promise to delivery, however, I'd still be at 20 Mbps. I'll take that.
I'm several weeks into my switch from Vonage to Comcast's Digital Voice. Verdict? Comcast Digital Voice works great. It has yet to go down and the sound quality is consistently excellent.
Unfortunately, I can't fully recommend it for two reasons:
- It has an annoying habit of knocking down my wireless connection in my house. I haven't noticed it for the past two weeks, but in the first month it was disrupting my wireless access point on a daily basis. It was easy enough to fix: unplug the access point and plug it back in. But kind of obnoxious, all the same.
- Within hours of signing up (with a new number, mind you), telemarketers started calling. I found out after the fact that Comcast sells its customers' data to telemarketing firms. What a nice surprise.
It's amazing that Comcast would treat its customers with such profound disrespect. I've already signed up on the US Do Not Call registry, but why does Comcast need to show such derision for its customers?
I noted a few weeks ago that I was considering dropping Vonage for Skype. Today, I pulled the trigger. After several weeks with no Vonage, I've been much happier. Skype actually works most of the time. Vonage? Almost never (at least during this past year - it used to be much better).
So, today I canceled my Vonage account. So that I have a "real" phone service I also signed up for Comcast's Digital Voice service. I'll give that a spin for a few weeks to see if it's solid. If not, I'll dump it for Qwest (POTS line). I'll continue to use Skype for international calls (once or twice each day) and when convenient, which turns out to be quite often as I like keeping my phone/laptop tightly integrated.
Bye! Bye! Vonage!! I had a year or two of pleasant service from you, but far too many headaches this past year to continue shelling out $60-70/month. It might be Comcast's fault for throttling down my bandwidth used for Vonage, but guess what? I don't have the same problem with my Skype service.
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