Adelphia Powerlink - Super Speed....When You’re Actually Connected
Written: Sep 15 '05
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Pros: Great Upload and Download Speeds, Constant Connection, Fast Browsing
Cons: Adelphia’s reputation for internet outages, costly, modem heating up
The Bottom Line: Not bad, but not as good as we hope it to be
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| romasuave's Full Review: Adelphia PowerLink |
In this internet age I am sure that every single one of us desires the same thing from our internet....speed, speed and more speed. Furthermore, we crave reliability, needing our internet to be accessible and rarely disconnect. Well, Adelphia Cable’s Powerlink service does half the trick, it is fast but not particularly reliable, here is what I mean:
First, let’s talk about speed, most of us are far removed from the 56.6k dial up modem even though it is very affordable nowadays, web pages have become far too saturated with heavy duty graphical interface that the old dial up modems can’t really keep up, so most of us are starved for fast browsing and fast downloads and uploads. Both cable and DSL offer these fast speeds, 1.5 MBps which is almost 30 times dial up speed, Adelphia claims up to 50 times faster than normal dial up and they are not kidding. I did a bandwidth test on CNET.com (http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html) 3 different times and found the average download speed to be around 2.3-2.4 MBps, around 40-45 times faster than dial up, and depending on the time of day it varies of course, a bit slower at night since many cable subscribers use their cable modem then, slowing down the system, but it is still quite fast then. Last night I downloaded a 5 MB file in less than 10 seconds, utterly amazing.
Powerlink is easy to set up, they usually offer a tech to install it for you but you could easily do it yourself. It comes with a Terayon modem with plugs for power, the cable and the ethernet cord, it does not have an on/off switch which can’t be understood, to unplug it the power cord has to be removed from the back of the modem, in the front there are 5 lights in a column, from top to bottom there is the power, cable, PC, Data and test lights. The top 3 are always on when the internet is being accessed, for some reason my data light is constantly blinking as if data is continuously being streamed, which it isn’t, before it only blinked when a web page was loading or a file was being transferred. I also have a problem with the modem heating up pretty quickly, I almost feel pressured to unplug the power to let it cool down, but as long as it works I don't care whether it is hot or cold.
My gripe with Powerlink is the outages I experience in my area. This past month we had 2 outages totalling 4 days of lost service, Adelphia support was of little help as they couldn’t do anything o remedy the situation, I finally unplugged the modem for a few hours (I did unplug it a few times earlier but only for a few minutes), plugged it back n and it worked, no customer representative offered me that solution. Intermitently the cable connection drops or just slows down drastically as if there is no connection, that is when web pages stall when loading and that can be quite aggravating, I expect a good consistent service for the money I pay, which is coincidentally pretty steep at $42.95 a month.
Adelphia offers a 3 month trial for $19.95 currently, a good deal but for too short a timeframe, SBC Yahoo’s DSL service was offered recently for $14.95 a month for a year, a very reasonable offer at almost dial up prices. I think Powerlink should lower their rates by around $10 to make it worth its users’ time. Comcast and Roadrunner (Time Warner) services offer somewhat better deals, Comcast is $19.95 for 6 months while Roadrunner claims speeds of up to 100x dial up speeds (twice as fast as Adelphia) and I’ve noticed somewhat better reviews for those companies. While I don’t know how DSL compared to Cable I can say it is more competitively priced with decently fast speeds.
In conclusion, I am satisfied with Powerlink, I love the high speed connection, love the constant connectivity, th ability to connect to a Mac computer and ease of installation, I am dissatisfied with the customer support, connection drops and slowdowns and the price tag.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 42.95
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Epinions.com ID:
romasuave
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Member: Roman
Location: The Valley....Dudes, CA, USA
Reviews written: 121
Trusted by: 71 members
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