Growing up in Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s, I was a great fan of the American Western. Every weekend I would walk four miles to the riding school to join a group of fifteen to twenty riders for a local trek to the hills, or to engage in barrel races and other events. The owner of the riding school, Mr. Skillen, favored the more relaxed Western style over the formal English schools. We often gathered by the warm stove in the large tack room on cold winter days and would sometimes sit for an hour or more discussing the latest episodes of Gunsmoke or Bonanza before saddling the horses and heading out for the day’s ride. Along with a number of my friends, I spent most Saturdays at the riding school, and dreamed of going to work on an American ranch.
One morning I came down to breakfast and announced to my mother and eldest brother that I was “going West.”
“How far west would that be?” my mother asked. “County Donegal?”
“Montana.” I retorted, seriously. “I’m going to Montana to live and work as a cowgirl.”
My mother was still laughing the next morning.
In March 2010, together with other Western fans, I will have an opportunity to relive the excitement of the Wild West—right here, in downtown Williamsburg.
Although dial-up Internet has made a small resurgence as a cheap option in the struggling economy, for many the crashing, screeching sounds of logging in to one’s 56k AOL Internet connection is a distant memory. However, high speed providers have often been been slow to provide service to some rural areas. Misinformation and confusing ads about high speed Internet abound. Here are some tips to consider when deciding on high speed Internet service.
What is High Speed?
High-speed (also called broadband) Internet is usually defined by what it is not: dial-up. Dial-up Internet typically provides a connection speed of 56kbs, meaning that it transfers 56,000 units of information per second. High speed connections are higher. Definitions of high speed from various sources have ranged from as low as 64kbs to as high as 2mbs (2,000,000 bits per second), but more common definitions are 256kbs and 768kbs. Over time, the general trend has been for the general definition of “high speed” to become higher and higher. Because of varying standards, it is important to get a specific figure from any company offering high speed/broadband.
This article first appeared in the December/January 1996-1997 issue of PL.
Well if finally happened. We got hooked up at home. After some struggle, I got it going, and cruised the Internet last night. My coworkers were starting to tease me. You got a new computer; why aren’t you hooked up to the Internet? When you going to get hooked up to the Internet? There were all these benefits I would get from the Internet, all this software, all this information, all this entertainment. I knew they were right. We had it at work, although it’s balky, and the quality of the hardware and the browser were inferior to what I had just bought for home. What I have at home is a Pentium 133 and the difference is astounding.
The speed is one thing, compared to the 486 at work, but the display is another thing entirely. I have a good monitor at home now with an ultra-fine dot pitch. The color is great and the graphics overall are night and day different from anything I’ve ever seen before. Running Windows 95 you could see some of that to advantage, but only on the intensely graphical Internet does my monitor truly get to shine. Color and graphics are the leading features of the Internet, and the constant shifting of screen displays as you hop from place to place put a strain on underpowered computers that makes them unbearably dull and slow.
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