The Ugly World of Dial-Up
We're in Ottawa for a wedding and staying with a family friend. I ask if she has Internet access so I can file a story for Monday's National Post. “Yes, but it's dial-up.” No problem, I mean how bad can it be to surf the Web a little. The answer: I forgot how agonizing slow dial-up can be. In fact, it's painful, and makes you wonder why millions of people in North America are still using it. I guess it makes sense for people who only want to check e-mail occasionally and/or those who don't want to spend $45 (in Canada) on high-speed access. Still, once you get a sniff of high-speed access, you wonder how dial-up ever satisfied your needs. For people who still insist on dial-up (and those in developing countries without a high-speed infrastructure), they have to be grateful for companies such as Waterloo, Ont.-based Slipstream Technologies, which makes compression technology that puts dial-up on steroids.
