Back in the bad old days, you might be paying $60+ for a 512kbit/s cable modem service, plus equipment/set-up costs, while dialup ISPs usually hovered around the $15-20ish range for a month.
Now, however, you can get broadband for much cheaper ($20/mo in some instances) while the quality of service has increased dramatically, while dialup's quality has held fast with only minor price drops. It only makes sense that people are shifting towards broadband; the only dialup I ever see used anymore by friends/acquaintances is NetZero and Juno because, well, you really can't beat free.:P
... considering that having Windows on it would have driven up the price at least $100, just for WinXP Home; plus you can probably get away with lower system requirements running a Linux distro as opposed to XP.
If I didn't need a bit more oomph and Windows, specifically, for my schoolwork, I would have picked one of these up instead of the Toshiba I ordered.
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It's a good question to ask, considering Amazon started up in 1996 and didn't turn a net profit until 4th quarter 2001. ;)
Back in the bad old days, you might be paying $60+ for a 512kbit/s cable modem service, plus equipment/set-up costs, while dialup ISPs usually hovered around the $15-20ish range for a month.
:P
Now, however, you can get broadband for much cheaper ($20/mo in some instances) while the quality of service has increased dramatically, while dialup's quality has held fast with only minor price drops. It only makes sense that people are shifting towards broadband; the only dialup I ever see used anymore by friends/acquaintances is NetZero and Juno because, well, you really can't beat free.
... considering that having Windows on it would have driven up the price at least $100, just for WinXP Home; plus you can probably get away with lower system requirements running a Linux distro as opposed to XP.
If I didn't need a bit more oomph and Windows, specifically, for my schoolwork, I would have picked one of these up instead of the Toshiba I ordered.