Earlier this week Cablevision called me up and asked whether I am interested in trying out their cable internet service (Optimum Online) for free (for the first month). I gave in too quickly and thus the self-installation kit arrived on Wednesday night. Hooked it up within 30 minutes and that included relocating my Airport Base Station from the bedroom, where the DSL connection is, to the living room, where the cable connection resides.
I was pretty impressed initially. Speed is noticeably faster (~1.5Mbps vs. just below 1Mbps for Verzion) and for the price quoted to me ($29.99/month) it is $5 cheaper than VerizonDSL per month. Then I found out it is too good to be true. Optimum Online’s newsgroup support is dismal, crap, shit! And in researching this problem (I thought it may be my connection or setup) I’ve found that the $29.99/month price is only for the first 6 months. After that, it is back to $44.99/month!
So naturally, I swapped the connection back to VerizonDSL last night and I am going to pack up all the cable modem kit next week and send it back to Cablevision.
One good thing did come out from this experience, I’ve started to stop using my Verizon email address for any web site log in or user ID. Instead, I switched as many IDs as I know to my mac.com address. This way, even if I do change ISP I won’t end up with not receiving any notification emails or similar.
Lost in Colonisation 
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