Found this on a newsgroup tonight. Any thoughts? -Ron -------- Original Message -------- Subject: V.92: USR/3Com blows random quadrupeds Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 17:12:07 -0500 From: Matt Black <albedo0@hotpop.com> Organization: And Now This Newsgroups: chi.internet I hadn't been paying any attention to this until just now, but it looks like 3Com/USR has been f--king up royally when it comes to making its analog modems compatible with V.92. First of all, most owners of USR V.90, x2, and V.34 modems, even late models, are just plain SOL with regard to flash-ROM upgrades, because relatively few existing USR modems will be upgradeable to V.92. That includes the Courier V.everything external, model 2806, of which 3Com has sold zillions and which still appears to be a current product (at least it's shown on the USR web site, with a list price). It seems that for most customers, USR's response is going to be "Sorry, but you'll have to buy a new modem instead." Of course, they'll probably give you a $50 trade-in allowance on your perfectly good $250 modem. Assholes. Second, apparently 3Com or USR has decided not to implement V.44, the better compression algorithm that supersedes V.42bis and that was approved along with V.92. USR is doing V.92, but not V.44. Third, there's at least one bad bug in one 3Com V.92 product, the Sportster model 5686. All of this is from Richard Gamberg's fabulously good modem pages at <http://808hi.com/56k/>. Specifically: V.92 news & updates: <http://808hi.com/56k/v92s.htm> USR V.92 bug: <http://808hi.com/56k/v92bug.htm> Additional questions for USR: <http://808hi.com/56k/v92q.htm> More on USR V.92 upgrades: <http://808hi.com/56k/v92usrc.htm> V.92 overview & background: <http://808hi.com/56k/v92.htm> Fortunately, V.92 shouldn't be that big a deal, because it doesn't contain anything that's really essential for most people. So judging by what I've seen so far, if you have a USR V.90 modem, you should probably stick with it and not try for V.92 unless you really need call waiting or the 48kb/s upstream speed. And keep in mind that you may never get V.44 from USR at all. So when it comes to V.92 modems, a different manufacturer probably deserves your business more than USR does at this point. Which is something I never thought I'd say. (I bought my first USR modem in 1990, and I've been a fan of Couriers forever.) BTW, on the earlier subject of badly-designed web sites that have too much flash, too many large images, and not nearly enough substance, I have to say that <http://www.3com.com> takes the grand prize. I hadn't known that usr.com is still the place to go for information, manuals, and downloads for USR modems, so a few days ago I tried 3com.com first. What a totally f--ked-up site. That gets my nomination for an award for the most bloated, useless, annoying, pointless, and time-wasting corporate web site in existence. The consultants who constructed that huge pile of shit should be taken out and shot, pro bono publico. I mean, *everything* is wrong with it. If you use a high-bandwidth connection then you might not notice it so much, except for the extreme difficulty of actually finding any information among the site designer's collection of vacation photos. But try it from a dialup connection if you want to get the full effect. Man, what a nightmare. - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.