Tag Archives: 56k

Yes, you can still do old-school dial-up Internet on a cheap modern Windows 7 netbook. Just add a cheap USB dial-up modem compatible with the netbook’s operating system. I used this technique to get (slow) Internet access in a remote village in the country with only a standard BT line and no available ADSL or wireless contract/modem. Netbook: Acer Aspire One A110 upgraded to 1.5GB RAM + 2 x 16GB SDHC cards. Controller: Technika wired USB optical mouse (not required, used during recording) OS: Windows 7 32-bit with vLite Browser: Google Chrome (Incognito mode) Dial-Up Modem: Conexant USB 2.0 56k Voice Fax Modem Dial-up ISP: Nippy Internet – www.nippyinternet.co.uk As I have a phone line with Virgin instead of BT, calls are 7p/minute from my line, and 1p/minute from a BT line after 6pm. Here you can see how slow the Google logo loads on dial-up. Google is perfectly usable, however, as is Bing, Wikipedia, email, Facebook, Twitter, as well as Windows Live Messenger. Mobile Web versions may be faster, such as m.twitter.com and http , however may have less functionality – try using them alongside the standard versions. For faster email on much slower connections: Hotmail: m.mail.live.com , Yahoo: m.yahoo.com , Google: m.gmail.com … Dial-up is adequate for text-based content and small amounts of graphics, albeit slower than broadband, however is not fast enough for rich media such as streaming video or music (eg YouTube), or advanced Google Maps features. Recorded August 8th …