Pulling the Starlink trigger

[DoggyDaddy]

heck I recall like 800, 3200 baud modems, or 5600, something awful.

My first one was 300 baud. You would literally watch the screen get "painted in" line by line. And it wasn't really internet. It was connecting to the computer at IUPUI - the old black and green screen.

 

[JTScribe]

heck I recall like 800, 3200 baud modems, or 5600, something awful.

I had a 300 Baud on my Commodore. It was a hand-me-down from when my dad upgraded to a smoooooookin' 1200 baud.

Considering everything was ASCII text, the speed wasn't all that bad considering.

 

[deo62]

I had an abacus, just saying.

 

[JTScribe]

I had an abacus, just saying.

Did you steal it from @churchmouse ?

 

[HoughMade]

This reminds me a bit of the "scientific" calculator discussion I had with my kids the other day. There were graphing calculators in my day but way out of my price range. I made due with a TI-35 Plus.

 

[Jaybird1980]

I just ran a test and ours was .66mbps with the kids trying to do online school. Hot garbage.

Tested the Verizon on my phone and it was 30.6. They keep sending us mail for unlimited home, when we call about it they say it's not available in our area.

 

[HoughMade]

I just ran a test and ours was .66mbps with the kids trying to do online school. Hot garbage.

Tested the Verizon on my phone and it was 30.6. They keep sending us mail for unlimited home, when we call about it they say it's not available in our area.

I checked on Verizon 5g...and even 4g LTE for the house and 5g is not available (and unlikely to be any time soon) and the 4g LTE plans have pricing and data caps that are not attractive. In addition, we don't always get decent cell service. We're not even that far out.

Comcast cable is about 500-600 yards from me, but we can't even pay them to run it down our road (we checked). Not enough houses. The lots are all gone, so there will be no more. Our local REMC has been talking about broadband for years. While the electricity service is great, they are still at the talking stage, not even the planning stage. I checked out every option out there. I was never interested in previous satellite systems because they did not promise much advantage over the current DSL and were expensive for what you get. Starlink isn't cheap, but if it comes in even at the bottom end of the specs it quotes, it will be phenomenal.

 

[indyblue]

I checked on Verizon 5g...and even 4g LTE for the house and 5g is not available (and unlikely to be any time soon) and the 4g LTE plans have pricing and data caps that are not attractive. In addition, we don't always get decent cell service. We're not even that far out.

Comcast cable is about 500-600 yards from me, but we can't even pay them to run it down our road (we checked). Not enough houses. The lots are all gone, so there will be no more. Our local REMC has been talking about broadband for years. While the electricity service is great, they are still at the talking stage, not even the planning stage. I checked out every option out there. I was never interested in previous satellite systems because they did not promise much advantage over the current DSL and were expensive for what you get. Starlink isn't cheap, but if it comes in even at the bottom end of the specs it quotes, it will be phenomenal.

So much for all the money Comcast gets for the all the Universal service fees they charge which is supposed to cover the cost of extending their network to places like yours.

 

[Jaybird1980]

I checked on Verizon 5g...and even 4g LTE for the house and 5g is not available (and unlikely to be any time soon) and the 4g LTE plans have pricing and data caps that are not attractive. In addition, we don't always get decent cell service. We're not even that far out.

Comcast cable is about 500-600 yards from me, but we can't even pay them to run it down our road (we checked). Not enough houses. The lots are all gone, so there will be no more. Our local REMC has been talking about broadband for years. While the electricity service is great, they are still at the talking stage, not even the planning stage. I checked out every option out there. I was never interested in previous satellite systems because they did not promise much advantage over the current DSL and were expensive for what you get. Starlink isn't cheap, but if it comes in even at the bottom end of the specs it quotes, it will be phenomenal.

We actually had the Verizon home service a couple years ago. They told us if we did a dedicated line then it would be unlimited. Well that wasn't true, they capped us at 10gb so it only worked for a week or so. Now we have been getting new advertisements for unlimited home service.

 

[cburnworth]

Back in the day I had a commodore 64 running a BBS on a dedicated line with 2 floppy drives. That was good times. Oh and driving to indy state fair grounds for swap meets.

 

[Hatin Since 87]

Dang. You guys really are old!

 

[ditcherman]

Step into the "back in my day" machine.

When I started law school, I had an Acer 486-100mhz desktop with a 14.4k modem...which was the hot setup at the time. When I got 56.6k a few years later, I thought I had reached the apex. I could watch online videos. With the 56.6k, I could download music, but a 3 minute song took something like 15-30 minutes. A 3 minute video, obviously, much, much longer.

Then I got DSL (different house, but same service)...and life changed. No tying up the phone. Could actually watch Youtube...but even then (which it still is) I am frequently down to 360p at home and never over 720. The more people online in the house (4 to 5 people...equal and greater number of devices), it gets pretty bad...but not 56.6k bad. It would be really nice to change the Netflix playback to something other than the lowest resolution which it has been on since I got it.

One of the problems for people like us - I’m paying $100 for 5m down 1m up which is highly overrated - is that web developers build everything for the masses that have 10gb or whatever for $20. We are in such a minority that they don’t care, and video and all the stuff that sells stuff comes up so slow for us but it’s fine for the average city/suburban person.

Do you mind sharing the cost of this?
Or, more or less than $100/mo?

 

[Alamo]

In about 1980 or so I was at a friend's apartment in the Indiana Univ married student housing apartments at 10th Street and Hwy 46 (I dunno if it's still there?). Anyway, he had an actual dial-up modem, one of the few I had ever seen, built into a widget that basically combined a keyboard and a printer. No monitor. Just the printer, which used the standard 132 column printer paper. And it was the kind of modem that you literally put the handset of the phone into a couple rubber cups. He could dial up the mainframe CDC 6600 and send commands, and the replies would come back and ... be printed out. I don't remember what the baud rate was, but it seemed to print about one character a second. LOL. I was impressed, he could sit at home and do some of his homework, I had to traipse through the snow and fight for space at a terminal in the basement of the comp sci building.

I'd love to tryout Elon's starlink, but it's still a bit rich for my blood. I have OK internet speeds, enough to stream movies usually, but AT&T drops out at least once per day for few minutes, sometimes more.

Keep us posted.

 

[Hatin Since 87]

One of the problems for people like us - I’m paying $100 for 5m down 1m up which is highly overrated - is that web developers build everything for the masses that have 10gb or whatever for $20. We are in such a minority that they don’t care, and video and all the stuff that sells stuff comes up so slow for us but it’s fine for the average city/suburban person.

Do you mind sharing the cost of this?
Or, more or less than $100/mo?

Just going off what I read online, says it’s $99/month. I have xfinity 300mbps for $70/month so I haven’t dug deep into starlinks prices and speeds, but that’s what I’m finding online

 

[HoughMade]

One of the problems for people like us - I’m paying $100 for 5m down 1m up which is highly overrated - is that web developers build everything for the masses that have 10gb or whatever for $20. We are in such a minority that they don’t care, and video and all the stuff that sells stuff comes up so slow for us but it’s fine for the average city/suburban person.

Do you mind sharing the cost of this?
Or, more or less than $100/mo?

$499 + about $50 shipping (for the "phased array antenna, cables and router) + tax. $99/month.

 

[ditcherman]

$499 + about $50 shipping (for the "phased array antenna, cables and router) + tax. $99/month.

That sounds like a great option for the money to me.
I hope it doesn’t ruin our night skies.
At a low light class in Terre Haute a few months ago we saw a starlink ‘string’ or whatever go overhead. It was amazing and cool, but I’m just imagining this futuristic world where you can’t look up without seeing those, it’s just so sci-fi, like the matrix is really here.

 

[HoughMade]

That sounds like a great option for the money to me.
I hope it doesn’t ruin our night skies.
At a low light class in Terre Haute a few months ago we saw a starlink ‘string’ or whatever go overhead. It was amazing and cool, but I’m just imagining this futuristic world where you can’t look up without seeing those, it’s just so sci-fi, like the matrix is really here.

I get it. I think that they have made changes to the satellites to make them less reflective because of concerns over light pollution.

 

[HoughMade]

Did you read the fine print? Dont expect to see your hardware till end of Q2, to mid Q3.

I got the email too and started to buy it for work for testing, but saw that its not gonna be till potentially late summer till it ships.

Looking further, I think these are 2 different things. They just opened for pre-orders where a person pays a $99 deposit, but there is a timeline that extends pretty far out and there is no guarantee (but the deposit is refundable). Based upon what I read, if a person pre-orders, before they pay, they gets an estimated ship date that is months out.

I had signed up some time ago to participate in the beta and the e-mail I got said that Starlink is now available in my area, but to a limited number on a first-come, first serve basis. I paid the entire almost $600 for the equipment, not the deposit, and got a confirmation that the equipment could ship in as little as 2 weeks, but more likely 4 to 6 weeks.

 

[ditcherman]

Looking further, I think these are 2 different things. They just opened for pre-orders where a person pays a $99 deposit, but there is a timeline that extends pretty far out and there is no guarantee (but the deposit is refundable). Based upon what I read, if a person pre-orders, before they pay, they gets an estimated ship date that is months out.

I had signed up some time ago to participate in the beta and the e-mail I got said that Starlink is now available in my area, but to a limited number on a first-come, first serve basis. I paid the entire almost $600 for the equipment, not the deposit, and got a confirmation that the equipment could ship in as little as 2 weeks, but more likely 4 to 6 weeks.

Looking forward to hearing how it works!

 

[Cameramonkey]

I suspect I got the email after you did and you are in the first batch and I wouldnt be. On my order form to check out it showed that no matter what it was going to be many months out.

It was clear it was going to be months, which is why I didnt go for it. I was buying it for a branch office that is losing its backup T1, and there are no other internet carriers where it is. It was going to jump to $6,000 per MONTH in 90 days if we dont cancel the service, so I couldn't turn Starlink up fast enough. (yes, that is how a carrier makes you dump service when they dont want to provide it any more)

Edit: and I had the option to buy it all or just pay the deposit. No change in delivery date.