NErancher

I've been having slowdowns with Wildblue the past few weeks too. Down has been in the 100s Kbps in the evenings until midnight or so. Until this happened, I had no slowdown at all in the evenings. "Perfect" service for over 3 years. They put up brand new cell towers around here, so I was hopeful. One is US Cellular, and about 12 miles away. The other is Viaero, and about 7 miles away. BOTH are limited to 1xRtt speeds!! Viaero has a plan that is $30 per month, unlimited, but their service doesn't work well either. I tested their service in a few houses, much closer (as in as close as about 4 blocks away from one of their towers in town). Pages loading partially, dropped connections, youtube videos not loading/taking forever, ridiculous. Had someone bring a modem out here, no service without an external antenna. They have a nice Ericsson w35 modem, if the service would work, it would be decent. Town was going to upgrade to fiber optic phone lines out here (15 miles), so hoping for $50 dsl sometime in the future, but who knows when. Guess I'm stuck....

That's my line of thinking with the trackpad, and in their demos I saw the virtual keypad. They also did a quick demo with the Dish Tech chat, but I missed that, all but the end. I don't know, it does look unhandy, but you'd think there would have been a lot of complaints in their product testing..., I don't know, can't say much without actually seeing one in person, maybe there is some other way to go around it, otherwise I'm needing two remotes. Also been waiting since January for the new box.... Didn't want the old model, but also getting tired of waiting. Having been a customer for this long, and never getting upgraded receivers, or having service calls, or even calling them ever, I think they should give me some sort of good deal on it when it comes out. It is in beta testing, I didn't check into it but I thought they said some dealers had them for testing, maybe in store, doubt it but who knows.

If they have their codes up for it, maybe it will work with a regular remote then, I'd think it would be smart if they did that. Not saying I won't like the new interface, I just see times when the ...old way would be better. I've seen the demos of it, looks slick though. As to your original question, can't help much. I don't have HD yet, obviously, or a DVR (thought about making one though). I have had Dish for the 10+, never a problem, never called a service tech, not that I would since I did my complete install myself.

And the remote has what looks like a tracpad instead of a number pad. Mouse/computer like onscreen control, so different interface than 722 I'm guessing. I've been waiting on the 922 to replace my 11 year old receiver. I hope a person can use the old remote to change channels, I'm used to just typing in the numbers I want, takes less than 2 seconds.

I pay $50 for 1/2Mb down and about 1/10 up, so yes $60 for that is well worth it....

I figured you erased it, just curious. That card is basic, I'd think with compiz off it would have been fairly fast/smooth/whatever. Something lighter than Gnome would have worked better too. I just wondered because I put Gnome on a similar spec'd machine and it did ok, but the graphics card was 64mb. Much lighter than that I would put something different on, and not Ubuntu in any case. # General Features: # NVIDIA TNT2 M64 chipset # 2D/3D Graphics # 32 MB SDRAM Right, aero wouldn't be on. Windows 7 should be ok. I don't use windows myself at all, but I've worked on systems for years. I think Vista is ok by now, what I've looked at. Since Windows 7 is basically the same, with just a few extra features, some fat trimmed and a ui change, and general fixes, it should be pretty good. Some of the press is good, some think it should be more of a service pack for Vista. I wouldn't pay for it though myself. I can't download it and I'm not going to have anyone send me a copy, so I'll probably look at it after it comes out. ...and while I was typing this, here they go again. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7834792.stm

Do you know what kind of graphics card you have/if you had the proprietary driver installed with Ubuntu (if there is one for your card, just curious)? If you didn't do anything after install to set up graphics you had the default open source drivers, which work but sometimes they are slow even with 2d stuff.

Thanks for the offer! I hover within a few hundred megs of my limit as it is most of the time, and have to "save" in order to be able to download cds as it is. I've ordered a few before. Every time I get a new one though, then I have a bunch of things I need to install. Darn WB. I don't even watch videos. They are putting up an Alltel tower about 10 miles away (finally getting usable cell service, maybe), hopefully something will be available through that by the time I get around to trying something else. If it works this far away that is. I used KDE 4.1.2 on Mandriva. 4.2 is a fair leap forward, faster/smoother, more features but still missing some. No freezes yet, a couple minor crashes but no logging out or anything, just ok the error box and it's like nothing happened. The only thing I've noticed "wrong" is when I go to the menu and click on a menu item to have it add that app icon/plasmoid to the desktop, then delete that plasmoid and restart. The plasmoid sort of comes back, but a blank icon, no name, and it no longer links to anything. If I don't delete them the first time, they work ok every time, and none of the other plasmoids do that. Being beta, I am not worried about it, plus it didn't come from the regular Fedora repo.

PCLOS is a good choice. The next version will be out sometime, as you probably know, but not a big deal, the beta is out, but they say not to use it except for testing, as it probably won't upgrade to final. There is also the community Gnome edition, heard good things, Gnome is better than it used to be. I was thinking with Tinyme (which is different from Minime, Tinyme is also a community remaster specifically for lighter installs on older hardware), you'd have a very simple, light, fast window manager to start with, but with the same PCLOS tools (and access to all their repository (and KDE later too). It would run faster on an older machine, but if you have enough ram on them, KDE should be ok. Antix is sort of the same type of thing, but Debian based, should be solid, newer kernel if I'm remembering right. If I was on an unlimited account, I would try more of them out. Can't say which you'd like better, so many choices.... I tried Opensuse at the 11.0 release in June. Worked fine, fast, I just didn't stick with it. Went back to Sidux for a while, but quit again after remembering why I quit the first time (too many updates, having to keep an eye on my download meter). Then Mandriva 2009, but that release was too buggy, I fixed everything, but things kept cropping up. Anyway, I got Fedora 10 at the last testing release, upgraded to final, and haven't had a single error of any kind. I found Autoten to automatically install things (not that I can't do it by hand). A week or so ago I installed the beta of KDE 4.2, I know some people don't like it, but aside from a couple minor glitches, they are about getting the 4.x.x series figured out. It's been stable, and speed is about the same as the 3.x.x series, even with the 3d "junk" turned on. And they got it so you can save things to the desktop like "normal" again. I'll probably switch to something else, but it's staying for a while. Good luck.

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php/Main_Page

I haven't used Windows myself in 2.5 years. I run Fedora now, but definitely not for something older. Opensuse, not bad, but not for something older either. Ubuntu isn't very good, I ran Kubuntu for 6 months. Pclinuxos for months..., not bad. I like Puppy, installing more stuff might not be as easy/not as big of a selection. It includes about every basic thing though. DSL or maybe Mepis Antix. Based on my use of one that "just works", at least for me, PCLINUXOS, for something lighter, maybe this. Nice control center, synaptic, easy to install more stuff. Haven't tried it myself though. http://tinymelinux.com/doku.php/latestrelease http://tinymelinux.com/doku.php/minspecs http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/?linux_distribution_sm=TinyMe%202008.1

Never had Hughes, but when I was looking, it was more expensive. Also the FAP is quite different, unless it's changed. It would not be useable to me, at least on the cheapest plan, like WB is. I would be at less than dialup speed most of the time. The FAP is still annoying, but at least I can download a whole iso or updates or whatever at once without getting Fapped. Have been hearing "horror" stories about WB, but not anyone I know that has it, also heard some about Hughes. discussion of Hughes FAP here http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,18387358~days=9999

There are 10 types of people in this world, those that understand binary, and those that don't.

nevermind, misread goal

I don't know about your problem, it could be interference or something. Anyway, my neighbor went through a couple of those right in a row, wireless problems too, only they completely quit and never worked again. I bought a wrt54gL (note the L) for my cousins, they are "better"/more reliable, no problems in over a year.