This page contains answers to common questions handled by our support staff, along with some tips and tricks that we have found useful and presented here as questions.

• What is Spyware?
• Palm Beach Post article on Local Broadband services
• Windows XP Service Pack 2 Discussion

The key is whether or not you (or another user of your computer) have been properly notified of what the software will do and that you have provided consent to have that software installed on your computer. In other words, is the software being deceptive in what it does or how it gets onto your computer?

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Palm Beach Post article on local Broadband services

By Kristi E. Swartz, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2004

Christy Clarke is moving into the 21st century at 256 kilobytes per second.

The 38-year-old Boynton Beach woman just switched from a dial-up modem to BellSouth's high-speed Internet service. Clarke uses the Internet primarily to send e-mail and pay bills, but recently she went to the Net to help research and plan a family vacation.

And that's when she became a believer in high-speed. Dial-up was just too slow.

"I was wanting to look at things online, and it was just getting very frustrating," she said.

Clarke's not alone. Frustrated with everything from slow music downloads to inability to play online games to uploading pages for junior's homework, a growing number of dial-up faithful are turning to, and getting hooked on, broadband, or high-speed. In March, there were 48 million Americans who chose high-speed over dialing into the Internet, a significant leap from the 31 million a year ago, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group that studies the Internet's impact on society.

And that kind of demand isn't going unnoticed. The telephone companies used to be the only high-speed Internet game in town. Now, cable television providers have joined in.

What's more, cellular phones now come with high-speed Internet capabilities. And wireless fidelity, or wi-fi, Internet services can send and receive messages, music and videos several times faster than before.

Even venerable Florida Power & Light Co., the state's biggest utility, is dabbling in the high-speed Internet business. Some of its employees are test-driving the concept called broadband over power lines, or BPL, before considering it for the masses, says FPL President Armando Olivera.

Cable firms at the forefront

Consumers like broadband because it's faster. Cable and phone companies like it because it brings in money. With 1.5 million subscribers last year, BellSouth was able to rake in $540 million in revenue from high-speed Internet alone, said Susan Kalla, an analyst with New York-based Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. She expects that number to climb to 2.2 million subscribers this year, adding up to $800 million in revenue.

But Adelphia and its cable brethren lead the broadband pack, having captured 26 million subscribers, or 54 percent of that market. Phone companies have about 20 million broadband subscribers, according to the Pew Internet project.

To be sure, most consumers -- 76.6 million of them -- remain satisfied with their dial-up modem; and there are numerous other companies offering dial-up services for less money these days. But analysts say that market is shrinking.

"That's not where the excitement is," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Marietta, Ga. "You can't do things in the dial-up world that you can do in the broadband world."

Eight years ago, the cable industry shelled out $85 billion to improve its network. Besides offering more channels with a sharper picture, the upgrades also were a gateway to the Internet.

Adelphia, the region's dominant cable company with 550,000 subscribers in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties, has improved most -- but not all -- of its network in order to sell its High-Speed Internet, formerly named Power Link. The cable provider recently started selling a souped-up version of its high-speed service for people who often send bulk e-mail files, watch videos or who play games online.

"Everything runs faster," said Eric Mitch, Adelphia's regional support engineer. "The e-mails download faster, there's a higher quality of video. If you're playing a game, it can talk faster to the server."

About 145,000 customers in Adelphia's six-state Southeast region use High-Speed Internet, and 40,000 of those signed on last year alone, said Andy Datta, marketing director for the service in the Southeast region, which is headquartered in West Palm Beach.

The service costs $42.95 a month if consumers already have Adelphia's digital cable service, or $54.95 if they don't. Cable modems, which the company installs, are $3 a month or can be bought separately.

"I think a lot of (former dial-up) customers... had to wait for a long time to upload their Web pages," Datta said, adding that even simple tasks are pushing people to broadband. "Kids can get their homework done that much faster," he said.

Mark Kramer chose Adelphia over BellSouth when he moved to eastern Delray Beach in December 2001, mostly because BellSouth wasn't offering broadband services in his neighborhood at the time, and secondly because Adelphia's high-speed service was less expensive.

"When it's on, it's fast; I can't complain about the speed," said Kramer, 33.

But Kramer said the service has been intermittent since February, to the point that he's called the company six times in one month to check out the cable line to his condominium.

"My cable worked, but my cable modem didn't work," Kramer said.

On higher cost: 'It's worth it'

Despite the bugs, high-speed Internet service has given cable a leg up in its fierce competition with the satellite companies. Meanwhile, cable companies also claim that broadband over a cable modem can be as much as 11 times faster than the phone company's high-speed Internet service.

BellSouth spokesman Joe Chandler is quick to debunk that statement by touting BellSouth's new DSL Xtreme -- which starts at $44.95 a month -- that downloads information at speeds that mirror that of cable's high-speed service.

Adam Mason was an early user of BellSouth's Fast Access high-speed Internet service, migrating there four years ago after using a dial-up modem.

"It was too slow," said Mason, 25. "I was getting kicked off all of the time."

Mason, a Boca Raton resident and MBA student at Florida Atlantic University, said the faster speeds are better for doing schoolwork. He doesn't worry about paying more for the service.

"It's worth it," Mason said.

The basic term for high-speed Internet over the phone is digital subscriber line, or DSL in techno-speak. For many consumers, it was the first answer to slower Internet connections that would often disconnect. Also, the technology doesn't tie up the phone line, letting people use the computer and talk on the phone at the same time.

Picture your phone lines as a pipe. If you draw a line down that pipe, the bottom portion is the low frequency where your voice communications travel. The upper portion is the higher frequency where the data communication occurs.

A year ago, Atlanta-based BellSouth introduced what it calls DSL Lite, which is sort of an in-between version of dial-up and high-speed access in terms of price and speed. The regular DSL starts at $39.95 a month while DSL Lite starts at $24.99 a month.

"Many experiences began with simply being able to do e-mail, and that opportunity has just exploded with the applications that are out there," said BellSouth's Chandler. "In order to take full advantage to do streaming video, music, gaming, you need higher speeds."

BellSouth, the dominant local-phone provider in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, was the sole local-phone company in the area to offer DSL until AT&T started up the service in May. Sprint and Verizon offer DSL in the areas where they offer local phone service, and other Internet companies offer broadband service by leasing BellSouth's lines.

Dial-up still enough for some

There are other ways to get something close to a high-speed experience.

The nation's major cellular phone carriers have ramped up their technology to play games, show short movies, download music files and ship gigantic amounts of data at close to the same high-speed Internet speeds as if you were tethered to your home computer.

If you've got a laptop, you can hang out at popular places such as Starbucks or surf away while waiting for your plane to arrive at the airport with the help of a fancy air-interface technology called wireless-fidelity, or wi-fi. It's as fast as high-speed service over a cable or phone line, but the signal cuts out when you're outside of the range of the "hot spot."

But millions of consumers still refuse to hang up on dial-up, saying that suffices for them.

"I guess I'm not as into the Internet as my teenage daughter is," said Arnel Boyet, a Lake Worth resident who was in the Boynton Beach Mall recently chatting with her friend, Connie Sdorow, who lives in Boynton Beach.

Both women, however, were forced to admit that while they use the Internet mostly to send e-mail, their teenage children do everything from research homework to play chess online. Their younger sons like to play interactive games and send messages to their friends. "I go on at night when my friends are on," said Michael Boyet, 12.

Perhaps they, too, will find there's a need for speed.

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Windows XP Service Pack 2 Discussion

You may have read some technology news about Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Unlike many other Windows updates, this one will cause some noticeable changes to your Windows applications. In our guide we will inform you of the most visible changes so you can adapt quickly.

What is SP2?  

Microsoft frequently releases patches and updates for Windows and its many applications. Windows includes a feature to download these automatically, although you can check manually by going to Windows Update with Internet Explorer. SP2 is a major update for Windows XP focusing extensively on improving security, and includes updates to Internet Explorer and Outlook.

 The majority of Windows users should wait for SP2 to be installed via Windows Update. Microsoft does offer the complete file as a 260MB download, but Windows Update will determine which files you need for your computer, and only download those. You may only need 50MB of it, so why spend time downloading the whole 260MB? Of course, if you have a fast connection and are curious about the new features, you might want to give it a try. If so, mark out some time, as the install procedure can take a while.

 What does it change?

SP2 focuses on improving the security of Windows XP. A lot of changes are under the hood--things that you won't notice, such as memory and network protection. But others will be visible in Internet Explorer and Outlook. For a very technical article on everything new, read "Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2".

Internet Explorer

New tools in Internet Explorer include a pop-up blocker and add-on manager.

The two biggest changes to Internet Explorer (IE) are the Pop-Up Blocker and the Manage Add-Ons screen, both accessible from the tools menu. In our testing, we found that the Pop-Up Blocker, at its default medium setting, worked pretty well, catching all common types of pop-ups. It places an information bar at the top of the window when it blocks a pop-up, which lets you decide whether to let it through or not. The Manage Add-Ons screen displays all the browser helper objects attached to IE, and lets you disable them. We would have also liked the option to remove them completely.

 When you try to download a program on Download.com, you may need to click the information bar at the top of IE to okay the download.

Outlook

The Windows e-mail client gets a few updates that should help protect from dangerous e-mails. With SP2, Outlook gets a plain-text mode that will cause HTML e-mail to be rendered as rich text, eliminating the possibility of malicious Javascript or other scripts. Also, e-mail attachments will not be allowed to interact with the system when they are received, preventing the automatic execution of worms and viruses.

Security Center

The Security Center offers links to up-to-date security information.

SP2 adds a Security Center to Windows, accessible by clicking the Start menu, then choosing Accessories and System Tools. The Security Center can also  be  accessed as a Control Panel. The Security Center is just a screen that gives you access to the firewall, Internet options, and the automatic update feature. It also includes links to security information resources.

 Firewall

Windows' built-in firewall hasn't been improved, although SP2 turns it on if it isn't already activated. If you start experiencing networking problems after installing SP2, you might want to try temporarily turning the firewall off. On a related note, SP2 automatically closes Windows network ports unless they are in use. 

If you have the Download.com Secure Delivery client installed, Windows Firewall may display a special alert when you try to download programs. Choosing the "Unblock this program" option in the alert will let you continue using the Secure Delivery client without any further interruption.  

Wireless Configuration Wizard

This new wizard can be found after clicking the Start menu, choosing Accessories, then Communications. It helps you set up a secure wireless network if you have the appropriate hardware.

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