Cyber Cafe's

One of the first things I desperately needed when I moved down was access to the internet. You don't realize how dependent you are on it until you're completely unable to access it. I even tried the public libraries which were packed with huge waiting lists to get onto the machines. Cyber Cafe's also seem to be a rarity, ironic for the bay area, I only found two at the time. One was a network arcade in Palo Alto (University Ave off the 101), but they just recently shut down. Here's a list of what I discovered.

Dial Ups

This all depends on what your criteria is. Good resources include Board Watch and The List on Internet.com. For me my criteria is that I wanted a lot of pops so I can dial up locally from wherever I am, including Canada (eg when I go home to visit), they have huge bandwidth, telnet access to email, and most importantly can get me going ASAP.

I had bad experience with Slip.Net, their install CD didn't work, nor were they able to activate my account with any decent amount of time. Same with Concentric. With one of these other big guys that is in alliance with Sprint (Earthlink I think), their sign up CGI form wasn't working. That kind of incompetence is unacceptable.

So I ended up with Netcom. They're ok, I guess. I tend to have to dial up multiple times to try getting a solid 56K connection, and this is the same experience with my friends. But they have a POP for every area code, and in Ottawa (where I'm from).

I tend to also play a lot of online net video games, and during any peak there's just too much lag to be playable. I'll be up at 2am just so I can have a decent game. As for alternatives, I don't really know who else to choose, no one seems to stand out for me.

High Speed
Well you have three choices: Cable, DSL, or Sattelite. Cable you are limited to your local cable company, which is usually a affiliated with @HOME which is owned by AT&T. DSL you're using your local phone company one way or the other, to find what DSL is available in your area use DSL Reports. There is also two way sattelite available by StarBand. Sprint also has a new Broadband Direct service which is a high speed wireless service.

The reality is that you go for whatever you can get. If it's DSL vs Cable Modem go with Cable Modem. I've had it and it's mindblasting fast. DSL has huge issues. People wait up to 3 months for it, and sometimes only to find out that it's not available. A lot of these DSL companies are also going out of business and hundreds of thousands of customers end up getting screwed. I ended up moving to the extreme east bay (Tracy) where DSL and Cable were not available. Modems are just too slow for me, so I went with the only option available to me: Two Way Sattelite by StarBand. It's actually pretty good, 50Kbps upspeed and I've experienced over 5Mbps down. However there is a lot of latency (900ms+), so playing video games with it is useless. I know people with the Sprint broadband wireless service, they get you up and running in a week and the speeds are cable modem comparable.