The Big Download

It’s easy to pick on Comcast (and I have for a variety of transgressions), but the high speed Internet has done nothing but get better with time.

I’m in the midst of downloading Microsoft’s new free flight simulator. Did I mention it was FREE?

I clicked the buttons and began drawing down the file. The counter said it was a 1.485GB transfer! Are you kidding me?

None of this would be possible without high speed Internet. It’s easy to pick on Comcast (and I have for a variety of transgressions), but the high speed Internet has done nothing but get better with time.

Ten years from now we’ll look back at these speeds and laugh, but I remember 300 baud modems. The difference is startling.

6 thoughts on “The Big Download”

  1. There’s a stroll down memory lane…300 baud. We had a choice between that and 1200 baud at Northeastern U.
    Hope you enjoy Flight!

  2. I remember hand-building a “pennywhistle” acoustic-coupled modem from a magazine article.

    A bunch of us got together and made a hand-drilled double-sided PC board for them that was laid out using a xerox machine. No plated-through holes, so you had to solder both sides of the component leads to make it work. It used a bunch of very cheap op-amps with resistors and capacitors to make it work. Very simple, but surprisingly stable design.

    Used it for years, until better ones came along. Ony issue I had with it was my eldest son (maybe 5-7 years old at the time). When he saw it start downloading on the ascii terminal, thought it was so cool and shrieked at just the right frequency to disconnect the session.

    I still give him a hard time about his formerly being able to whistle 300 baud data…

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