Our Readers Say Broadband or Bust

Kevin McKean

Who would have predicted a few years ago that the clunky new Internet would become the fastest-growing medium in history? PC World readers, that's who. While the number of U.S. households with Internet connections grew by an astounding 60 percent last year, the percentage of connected PC World readers grew hardly at all--because most of them had already been online for years.

Now our readers are leading a new technological charge to high-speed Web access. It's a frontier that not many people have crossed. For most U.S users, broadband access is available only at work. But for the past couple of years, the readers we surveyed expressed increasing interest in setting up high-speed connections at home or in small offices--usually in order to enjoy Fortune 500-like connectivity. That's why the magazine returns to the subject this month with the three-part cover package "Warp-Speed Web Access."

Acquiring the Broadband Habit

We started by surveying more than 500 readers who had installed their own broadband--in some cases, several times. The results are enlightening. As Scott Spanbauer notes in "Cable vs. DSL vs. Everything Else," our readers say that cable-modem connections are much easier to install than phone-based DSL, but that DSL is more reliable. Dennis O'Reilly's "The Best Broadband Sites" identifies the top sites to visit with your broadband connection. And in "Sharing the Bandwidth," Alan Stafford reviews inexpensive gateways and routers that let multiple PCs share a single high-speed link. But beware: Broadband is addictive. More than half the readers we surveyed said they spend more time on the Web now that they have high-speed connections--and even before that, they averaged 66 hours a month online.

If you're in the market for a computer, "In Search of Trouble-Free PCs" is a must-read. PC World queried 30,000 readers to find out how the machines they bought have held up. With PC prices falling--35 percent in the past three years--you might expect an erosion in quality. Fortunately, the reliability of business systems and notebooks is up from last year's survey. Only among home PCs did quality decline. Unfortunately, manufacturers seem to be cutting costs in post-sales support--particularly with phone help. Our survey reveals that the quality of service is down across all categories, making our detailed comparison--assembled by Aoife McEvoy, Stephen Swoyer, and the PC World survey team--all the more valuable.

To go with that new PC, you might consider one of the sleek new thin-screen monitors described in Leigh Anne Jones's "Dream Screens." Only a little over a year ago, the industry finally agreed on a digital standard for driving a display--the Digital Video Interface. The DVI is one reason you'll find a slew of top-performing new LCDs on the market at prices under $1000. Jones and the PC World Test Center report on 10 models that warrant a look.

Gregg Keizer's "Web Shopping" offers advice on getting the most out of electronic wallets, shopping bots, and other online buying tools. If you're into pocket-size gadgets, don't miss Denny Arar's review of Kyocera's new Smartphone. It's not the first PDA-cell phone hybrid. But it's smaller, lighter, and less expensive than earlier versions and promises to simplify the lives of those--like me--who carry a PDA and a phone at all times.

Finally, David Essex reports on our first tests of PCs powered by Intel's Pentium 4. The P4 posts clock speeds of 1.5 GHz today, 3 GHz down the road. But those blazing stats don't yield much advantage in real-world apps. In our tests, the P4 barely beat older 1-GHz PIII PCs on most measures and lagged behind on several (see "Pentium 4: Boon or Bust?"). The P4 is optimized for computationally intensive tasks and surpassed the PIII in the video part of our tests. But if you need more performance from word processing or spreadsheets, the P4 offers little help.

That's all for now. Drop me a line.

Coming Up in February

Essential Windows Tips: What you need to know about upgrading, customizing, and managing files in 9x, 2000/NT, and Me.

Web Apps vs. Shrink-Wrapped: Can a Web-based app replace that pricey program on your PC? We compare the contenders.

The Better to See You With: PC World's review of today's top graphics boards--the hot technologies, trends, and Best Buys.

Big-Time Hardware for Tight Spaces: The best PCs, flat-panel LCDs, and multifunction devices to build a compact office.

Good Job Hunting Online: Advice for finding productive job leads.

Kevin McKean is editorial director of PC World.