Free Equipment Removal and Russian Santa

No, it's not. Ookla reports that the average download speed in the US has jumped by 10 Mbps in just the last year. California is at 40.8 Mbps, the fourth-highest in the country:

Keep in mind that these averages are likely to be biased a little bit high, because people with dial-up probably can't wait to do a test with Ookla.
But they agree with our experience. My guarenteed d/l speed is 50 Mbps. Ookla and several other speed tests consistantly report my speed as just over 60 Mbps, which is the same result I hear from my neighbors who are on our local cable system and are using the mid-priced service, as I am.
If you're under 10 Mbps, you're sucking wind in today's Internet world.

I do not know what good it is, but it sells new for 3,200.
It is an ice box and they have to be stainless and NSF certified.
i

Fastest available in my neighborhood is ADSL 1.5Mbps. No cable service available. To the west a couple miles they can't even get that the last I knew. Have to use dial-up, over-the-air service/modem or get something through the cell providers.
I'm not exactly what you would call "out in the boonies" either...

That in an Ole Hickory CTO. Can be used as a wood smoker, oven or combination to give the meat some smoke then fire the oven to finish cooking the meat.
Top dial is temperature, next down is the oven temp control and the bottom is a timer control.
Price - about $4000.00 in that condition...
Oh it will do 36 whole chickens, or 16 small turkeys, or 12 brisket at a time....
(Local place uses one and I've tended it a few times)

I looked at Ookla and could only find data about Australia, Canada, GB, and the US. I am under the impression that Korea has the fastest connections. What am I doing wrong?
Dan

I was at 1.5mb/s until early 2015, after bitching every month that they were sending "Upgrade to 12mb/s service" ads every month. They put me to 5mb/s at no extra charge. 3-4 down, .5 up.

Someone else mentioned Gimp, the Photoshop of Linux. I've heard only good things about it.

I live over 10 miles from town , and I have about 6Mb/sec down and 768(IIRC) up . They DO have fiber optic service to town , I think that might help . I believe our location would qualify as "out in the boonies" .

Right.
OK, I never smoke that much, something like 20 lbs at once (then I freeze it). Would that be a problem?
i

Gunner Asch on Fri, 01 Jan 2016 09:44:06 -0800 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following: It is rather interesting to discover that major web sites (on real estate, one 'social networking'), have decided that the 20% of the population which uses Firefox, are just not worth bothering with.
Different outfit, just took me two days, three computers and four different browsers to finally get it to take my money.

Is there something wrong with one of these?

Not a problem to run a small batch. Just that they are a large unit. Did you get the wood basket for the firebox? If not they are not hard to make or buy a replacement. Wood wise 4-5 pounds of DRY seasoned wood will run 7-8 hours.

I just went there and punched in my zip. They show "providers" who don't even serve the area! They also show speeds that are NOT possible due to the current infrastructure.
The stat of - 74% of New Yorkers "have access to" 100mbps or faster is BS marketing. Having "access to" is MUCH different than actually having that speed. From my place I can go less than a mile and find people who can't get anything over 3mbps and more that are on dial-up. Even the folks right in town and next to the main feed only get about 12mbps. The infrastructure can't support faster than that.
It's people who use the data from sites like that who seem to think "everyone" has high speed.

Read Steve W's reply, much the same thing here.
Cable service doesn't quite make it this far. DSL is limited by what AT&T is offering, which is the ADSL 1.5Mbps. All the DSL providers are basically reselling the AT&T service. If you read the small print you have to have an AT&T phone to qualify for their plans.
The over-the-air stuff (microwave, whatever), last time I checked around a year ago is the same speed and about the same cost as current ADSL. Of course this has its own unique set of problems/headaches too.
Only thing faster would be a cellphone data package which has its own set of headaches and costs associated with such...

My cellular Internet service has lower priority than voice calls and slows or halts during commuting hours. At its best it can't quite keep up with YouTube. This hilly area also has issues with cellphone and broadcast TV reception, though not enough to drive me to paying for cable.
-jsw

Interesting observation there. I don't know the pitfalls for the different services but being an old electronics tech I know they are there...
When Nextel first came on in my area they could support 6 Push-to-Talk users per RF channel or 3 Phone users. It caused us a lot of headaches. They took over the old Motorola analog trunking system. Some channels were kept as analog for the time being while the remaining were converted to digital. We serviced the analog side. Nextel the digital. The freq scheme was never designed to be digital. A digital signal takes up the full bandwidth all the time. To our ear it sounds like white noise. If a digital channel got turned on next to the analog control channel it would greatly reduce the whole analog system range due to interference from the new digital channel. We took the grief for a once great system not working well anymore. Customers would get frustrated and sign-up for the "new" system because we couldn't make the old system work right anymore. Worked great for you know who :)
The other systems in my area require a unique modem and antenna. So you will have that expense to figure in. Plus the monthly charge is considerably more for roughly the same speed as ADSL. My current modem/router/wifi unit is a discard from a neighbor. I fixed the wall-wart, got it working again :) Can't beat that price. If you watch Craigs List they turn up there for ~$20 pretty regular...

Great. I have a wood basket, yes. I find that 5-6 hours of smoke is all that is needed, with the total hours of heat working great at 12 hours, for brisket.
i

I may gift my laptop with a cheap used WWAN card that handles the CDMA EVDO protocol and see if I can register it with a free ISP like FreedomPop.
When the telco tech found out that I understood how their system works he removed bridge taps and cut off the line beyond my house. But the copper pair is much too long for DSL.
-jsw

Well, this stuff is the lifeblood of my business, so it's worth it to do some checking. I'll have to look into Steve's situation but I checked yours first.
First, I took your "Grand Rapids" address literally. And the reason I worded my question the way I did is that everyone who is actually in Grand Rapids has access to at least *one* of those high-speed services.
But you're 12 miles out, in a mostly rural area, right? (It looks very pretty, BTW.) Assuming I have your address right, here's the story.
Your ZIP code actually overlaps TWO COUNTIES! And both AT&T and Xfinity confirm that at least SOME people in that ZIP have access to high speed. Xfinity (Comcast) offers 150 Mbps in some parts of your ZIP. Just not you.
In fact, in Ottawa County, fewer than 3% of the people who live there do not have high-speed Internet access. Almost all of the population in your county is concentrated in three areas, and you aren't in one of them.
And that's the common situation around the country. Where there are concentrations of people, there is high-speed Internet. And that's most of the country, population-wise. It's one of the things you give up for living in nice rural and semi-rural areas.
From a business point of view, we have to go with the numbers. So we build Web sites for the mass of the market.
BTW, AT&T says they can offer you 3 Mbps download. You might want to ask.
The wireless and satellite service in your area is expensive and not all that fast. Personally, I wouldn't bother unless I really needed it for some business reason. None of it appears to be over 25 Mbps, so it doesn't qualify as "high-speed." So your area isn't counted in the national figures for high-speed service.