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Technology Stocks : Westell WSTL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bill c. who wrote (13758)	10/27/1998 8:37:00 PM
From: Dug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21342

bill, here you guys go again, back to present mgnt being Marc. I don't buy the big change in mgnt as does not wall street. Its not Marc unless Im reading this wrong. I hope for our sake I am as it appears hes gone most of the time. Bellheads in contract manufacturing..... He reports to the board... Dug

To: bill c. who wrote (13758)	10/27/1998 8:59:00 PM
From: Trey McAtee	Respond to of 21342

bill-- very true. however, they have never had the foresight to change direction and explain to us what the problem is? oh, the purely evil stuff i lay at seamens feet. i dont give zionts that much credit. as far as i am concerned zionts is nothing more than a child put in charge of a company, and made scapegoat by its ineffectual board. all-- there are many on this board, and on yahoo (including myself at one time) who wondered why the company doesnt have someone who comes on and refutes the negative posts. of course, we were laboring under the delusion that the information posted was wrong. now i feel confident it wasnt. we got duped, as much by ourselves and our wishful thinking as by the company. good luck to all, trey

To: bill c. who wrote (13758)	10/28/1998 11:54:00 AM
From: Ken M	Respond to of 21342

US West's speedy DSL: Web access so fast it's scary by Paul Andrews Seattle Times columnist I'm almost afraid to say how much US West's new DSL service rocks. I'm afraid because I don't want to jinx myself. Every time I say something good about DSL, it acts up. If I approach the subject cautiously, qualifying my praise with buts and excepts, it seems to behave just fine. DSL stands for digital subscriber line. What that translates to is a very fast Internet connection. You can go from 256 kilobits per second to 768K, although higher rates cost more. The former is about five times as fast as a typical fast-modem connection (56K). The latter is as fast if not faster in practice than a typical office high-speed link, depending on whether the T-1 line you use is shared and how much competition from server traffic you typically must endure. What DSL means to me is that, whereas I used to watch TV only occasionally, I now watch it almost never. At very high speeds, the Web is a much more fascinating place. I was lucky I qualified for DSL. Not everyone does. US West has to test your phone line to see if it accepts DSL. It has something to do with the distance from your home to a central office and whether you have copper wire to your house. If you are one of the fortunate ones, DSL right now makes good economic sense, as long as you are a frequent Web user. Service starts at just $40 a month. If you install the modem and software yourself (more on that in a moment), you pay an activation fee of $110. If you have US West do the installation for you, the whole thing (activation included) is $260. You pay the monthly $40 service charge if you have your own Internet service provider. If you want to use USWEST.net as your ISP, your monthly fee for DSL and the ISP is $59.95. Here's a kicker, though: If you order DSL and USWEST.net service by the end of the month, you get the modem, software and free activation. In addition to the Internet service, you get to keep using your same phone line. You still have to pay the regular voice-line fees, however. You have to buy the equipment from US West. It includes a Cisco 675 Modem, phone wire, filters, a wall mount, power cable, serial cable, Ethernet connectors and NIC card with software. The card is straightforward to install as long as you have a free slot in your computer. So are the modem and cables. As for the software, it is probably pretty straightforward as long as you have a standard Windows or Macintosh setup. If you have Windows 98, however, it's an adventure. Windows 98 requires a special software patch you can obtain over the Internet or on a disk from a service technician. The problem is that the patch also requires you to pull files off the Windows 98 installation CD-ROM. And that is a mess. You have to search the CD-ROM for the right file, then go back to the US West patch, then to the CD-ROM. This tedious file searching took up much of my Saturday afternoon. At one point my computer got "lost" (well, maybe it was the computer's operator who got lost) and aborted the installation process. Bad news. The computer would not reboot into Windows. Fortunately, I had a friend I could call who knew exactly what my problems were and walked me through restoring Windows 98. The US West technician did not have a clue. Although he tried to be as helpful as he could, he was not a computer guy, he noted several times. My advice to US West: Offer an entirely different installation for Windows 98. Within moments of getting DSL up and running, however, I was ready to forgive all. Speed is sweet. Downloads that formerly took 10 to 20 minutes flitted onto my desk in a minute or two. Links exploded onto the next page. I had a couple of more "blackouts" within a two-week period. Since then, service has been fine. Having written that last sentence, though, I'm worried I've cast a hex. Especially with Halloween coming up. If you're the type who is willing to endure some initial hassle for a great payoff, and have a greed for speed, DSL is for you. Through the end of this month US West is offering a free modem and phone, a $400 value, in return for signing up for DSL. seattletimes.com