Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Ever since the first internet capable computer was brought into our home by my parents on or about the 8th of August, 1998, we have had, exclusively, dial-up internet service. It carried us into the digital age with access to Ebay, it introduced us to Electronic Mail, it was my link to the planet Ragol and the colony ship Pioneer 2, and has been the main stay for virtually all of my internet related activity for these last fourteen and a half years. Why yes, even as I post this message now I am online with the original, and most sophisticated form of modern analog communication there is. Your cell phones have higher bandwidth data throughput to the good old interwebernets than I do. All that is about to change though. If all goes as scheduled, sometime this, Friday, morning while I am off at work, the cable company will be setting up a broadband modem in our home. And this time tomorrow night, I could well be able to actually watch YouTube videos from the comfort of home.

I'd like to think that having broadband access from home will overall improve my life, but having been restricted online for so very long has caused me to put in a serious mindset of consideration into every link I click for thought of load times. It does rather raise a question for me about the potential for forgetting from whence I came. What does the broadband future hold for me, for PSO Archive, and for any future interests that may come? Only the journey into this digital future keep of informational wealth may truly reveal those answers.

For the previous 14 1/2 years of internet, I would like to thank.
ViprLink (out of business)
BlueLight (out of business)
ISP I have forgotten tha name of
EarthLink (out of business)
Sprint (Dreamcast) (no longer offers dial-up)
MSN (Dreamcast) (dial-up division shut down)
And our current provider from whom we've had the longest ongoing and best service out of the entire bunch NetZero.
Thank you all for making the internet available to me!

I go to bed now on this the waning eve of our dial-up era and shall take respit with the knowledge of that new age dawning upon us on the morrow.

It will certainly be a change for you. I remember the days of having dial up at home, then going to school or work and having blazing fast speeds. It was a drastic difference. I couldn't even really play PSO much when it was popular because my dial up wouldn't handle it well. The greater speed and bandwidth really changes what you can do, especially in these days of videos and every gaming console having online features.

EarthLink (out of business)

They're still in business. Maybe they withdrew from your area, I don't know, but they are operating and even still offer dial up.

Ha, this post brought back a lot of memories of my time with dial up internet service when I first began computing. I switched to broadband years ago and have never looked back. Everything is sooo much better now and faster too!! Let us know how you like it after you've experienced it a little while.

Well, I'd not heard nor seen any mention of Earthlink in what seemed like forever, so just kinda assumed they were no more.

Seems that as of today I've resolved all of the software and driver updates on my PC, as well as my parents PC and the two laptops in the house. Oddly enough, my PC has taken the longest of the bunch to fully update. All seems settled now though. Glad I've got a new PC in the final stages of completion. Ran the PSO2 assesment tool on this PC earlier and got an abysmmal score and the frame rate to match, but that's a story for a different topic.

So far so good. Taking some getting use to what with the web pages loading near instantly. I'm so use to clicking on a link and then unpausing whatever DVD to watch between page loads that I suspect this could cut into my anime viewing habits, which was unforseen.