Cable Modem

Using a bus billboard campaign, a coalition of 20 churches, labor groups and community organizations is trying to pressure Verizon Maryland to bring its next-generation, high-speed Internet service to Baltimore. The service, marketed as FiOS, is available or being rolled out in several counties around the city and in Washington, but critics accuse Verizon of leaving Baltimore out of expansion plans. With high-capacity fiber-optic wiring, FiOS can offer television, telephone and Internet download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second - many times faster than a typical digital-subscriber line or cable-modem connection.

The BlackBerry, with its ability to send and receive e-mails on the go, is the coolest of the smart phones. Until you actually have to use it as a telephone. It is then that the wide-bodied BlackBerry, shaped to accommodate a full keyboard, becomes a bit less cool. A BlackBerry-toting lawyer friend of mine said it's like slapping a frozen waffle against your ear. The wide shape is great for thumb typing, but it's bulky to carry, and when you're on the run it can be hard to line up the ear holes with your ear. What's more, the standard BlackBerry has a dim screen and a relatively slow Internet connection.

In a decision likely to limit consumer choice in the rapidly growing market for high-speed Internet access, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that cable companies were not required to give competitors access to their broadband networks. The decision was seen as a victory for cable giants, such as Comcast Corp., and the Federal Communications Commission as well as the one-time Bell operating companies - including Verizon Communications Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. - which are seeking a similar exemption.

I have nothing against Comcast@Home technicians. They're nice people. They treat me well. But I'm sorry to see them, because that means I'm not online. A September convert to cable Internet service after years of 56K telephone connections, I've just had my third visit by a technician to treat my ills. I'm still not sure why my service hasn't lived up to the hype about fast downloads all the time. It could be that I live in Owings Mills, which almost every technician and service rep I've talked to has described as the capital of connection problems in Comcast's world.

How badly is the regulatory battlefield tilted against Verizon and other phone companies in their fight against the cable concerns? So badly that Verizon archenemy Comcast plans to collect and remit taxes on its new Maryland telephone services even though, legally, it probably doesn't have to. How's that for shaming regulators into seeing that technology has left their rules in the dust? Similarities notwithstanding, Comcast's "digital voice" Internet phone calls are not taxable the way that Verizon's regular calls are. Courts and legislators have created a broad and unfair regulatory gulf between Internet and cable-modem phone products, on one hand, and traditional phone service, on the other.

When I set up a basement network between my office and the kids' rec room two years ago, I learned that making computers talk to one another is 50 percent science and 50 percent voodoo. After more sweat than I care to remember, we wound up with a cozy little system - all standard Ethernet - that serves up to five PCs and allows three to share a cable Internet connection. Unfortunately, it's limited to the basement, which, as any true geek knows, is unacceptable. So for this project, I volunteered to extend it above ground by splicing in a wireless system based on TechWorks' $279 Buffalo AirStation.

My PC is a couple of years old with these specs: AMD K6-2, 450 megahertz with 128 megabytes memory and a Diamond SpeedStar A50 (8 MB memory) graphics card. I hoped the new Max Payne game would work on my machine (minimum requirements include 16 MB memory graphics card), but it doesn't. I assume this is because of the video card. Should I get a new video card or buy another PC? If I get a new PC, should I go for the Pentium 4 or Pentium III or AMD Athlon? I want this PC to last, so it seems crazy not to buy the latest technology (i.e.

Electronic surveillance is in. While the government watches airports, harbors, and other sensitive installations subject to terrorist attacks, big businesses watch their employees, warehouses and offices. But the people who sell surveillance products that combine video cameras with simple software that enables remote monitoring via the Internet are thinking even bigger. Well, smaller, really: They want to bring video surveillance to the small business that could not otherwise afford it, and to the home, where few now think of using it. They say their products are the best way the guy with the little shop can protect his inventory or the home-office worker out on a call can keep family members away from the desk or the PC. They also pitch their products as ideal for keeping a remote eye on the nanny or on the elderly parent who is using a spare bedroom.

PHILADELPHIA - In an effort to keep customers from defecting to cable, Verizon Communications Inc. offered a slower version of its high-speed Internet service yesterday for $14.95 a month. The new tier of DSL service might represent an early benefit for consumers as phone companies try to move into territory traditionally dominated by cable, and as cable firms begin to sell phone services. Its success or failure might also answer an important question in the Internet marketplace these days: Which is more important, price or speed?

When I click Start and then Run and type in msconfig.exe, I get a thing called the Startup tab. There I see many programs starting every time my machine boots up. I would like to delete the unused files and duplicated ones. What will happen? This program is the key to disabling a raft of nasty and unwanted programs that various software vendors selfishly slip onto consumers' PCs. A great many nagging pop-ups to register programs or to buy upgrades get placed in the Windows Startup routines, and msconfig lets users remove a check mark beside each one to deep-six it on the spot.