HESE young people today, with their loud
music and cable modems! They're too young to remember the
olden days, when it wasn't just your PC and your Windows
version that became obsolete every other year; it was also
your modem. Modems that ran at 9.6 kilobits per second gave
way to 14.4K models, and then to 28.8 and 33.6. In all,
Americans spent more than 15 years trying to keep up with the
Hayses.
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And then it stopped. In 1997, so-called 56K modems
appeared, and that was that; the industry hit a technological
brick wall. Nowadays, if you feel the need for speed, you can
pay $40 or $50 per month for a cable modem or D.S.L. hookup.
But 70 percent of Americans either can't afford high-speed
connections or can't get them because they live outside major
cities. Legions of hotel-room laptop luggers are locked in the
limbo of 56K, too. They still connect to the Internet the way
they have since 1997: by dialing over ordinary phone lines at
56K or slower.
If you're among those millions, here's some big news: the
modem arms race isn't quite over.
If you're willing to pay $5 or $8 more per month, companies
like Propel, Artera and Proxyconn can deliver Web pages to
your screen significantly, palpably and thrillingly faster
while using the modem, browser and Internet service you
already have. (The Internet service providers Earthlink and
NetZero offer similar speedup software for the same kind of
monthly premium.) If it now takes 18 seconds for you to call
up Amazon.com,
you'll wait only about 7 seconds with a Web-acceleration
service. It's as simple a time-for-money transaction as you'll
find.
The adventure begins when you provide
your credit-card information at Propel.com, Artera.com or
Proxyconn.com; you can try the service for a week before
you're billed. (These companies are betting that once you've
tasted their sweet nectar, you won't leave. Trying to
uninstall Propel, for example, produces this message: "If
Propel Accelerator has not worked well for you, this is not
normal.")
