Why Verizon FIOS Faster Upload Speed Matters

One of the common questions to ponder these days is which of the two are better - Comcast or Verizon FIOS. I usually answer that technology-wise, Verizon FIOS is superior because technology advances allow fiber optic cables to carry more data at a faster and more efficient rate than copper cable ever will. But a more relevant reason to switch to Verizon FIOS is because they offer a plan that gives you the same upload speed as your download speed. Why does this matter and what is the difference between upload and download speeds?

When you're receiving email or watching a video over YouTube, you're downloading. When you're sending email or sending a video clip over to YouTube, you're uploading. A few years ago, most of us didn't care about upload speeds because the largest files we were sending were pictures and those were not even larger than a megabyte then. But today with larger megapixel cameras and video sharing sites like YouTube, we're starting to care about upload speeds.

Just to give you an idea how upload speeds matter, consider your Comcast service with 20 Mbps download speed but your upload speed is only 1.5 Mbps. So that 1 minute video clip (about 100 MB in size) you just took of your daughter sledding is going to take almost 10 minutes to send/upload to YouTube while on FIOS (if you have their 15 Mbps upload plan) it would only take about 55 seconds.

Note that this only mattes if you are doing some amount of uploads such as sending videos over to YouTube or sending your photos to web sharing sites like Flickr or the Kodak Gallery. If you're not doing any of these, chances are you'll be OK with Comcast and the standard FIOS packages that give you about the same upload speeds as Comcast. Last time I checked, the FIOS 15/15 internet access package costs about $65 compared to about $43 for their 5/2 (5 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload) plan.

A Trip Down Tech Memory Lane

Found myself enjoying this fun and nostalgic article (1988 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective) today on tech.msn.com. They looked back 20 years ago to common gadgets we now live with everyday. Here's a brief summary:

Laptops
- 20 years ago: 9 inch screen, weighed 14 lbs. and cost about $4,000
- Today: 14 inch screen, 4 lbs. and cost about $1,000

Home PCs
- 20 years ago: Tandy 80286 with 640KB RAM, floppy-drive (no hard drive) and 14-inch monitor (16 colors), for about $1,400
Today: HP dual-core desktop with 2 Gigs of RAM, 750 GB Hard drive, CD/DVD drive and 17-inch flat panel LCD (16.7 million colors) for about $1,000

Printers
- 20 years ago: $1,000 color dot-matric printer
- Today: $100 photo-quality inkjet printer

Modem
- 20 years ago: 2,400 baud for about $400
- Today: 38 Mbps for about $60

Internet Access
- 20 years ago: Compuserve, $47.50/hour for high-speed (9,600 baud) dial-up access. Low speed (up to 2,400 baud) was $12/hour.
- Today: 20 MB/sec for unlimited access for about $50/month (and you can wirelessly share with multiple computers at home)

Hard Drives
- 20 years ago: 150 MB for almost $5,000
- Today: 500 MB for about $200, 1 TB for about $360

Cell phones
- 20 years ago: Analog, weighed 28 ounces and cost $2,500
- Today: Digital, weighs less than 5 ounces and cost about $100 (ofte FREE upon sign-up)

It's amazing how far we've come in 20 years. Just imagine what the next 20 years will bring us. Prices will probably not go down much more on some devices because as Dell learned last year, you can't continue selling computers for less than cost and still expect to make a profit. But at today's prices, most of these devices are simply affordable to the general public unlike 20 years ago when not anyone can just plunk down $2,500 for a cell phone. And note that I didn't even show inflation-adjusted prices here, so that $2,500 cell phone is really $4,300 in today's dollars.

Satellite Internet Making a Comeback?

A few years ago, I worked with some satellite companies in the area and another one in the West Coast. Some of them were trying to break into the internet space and one of them had a product out in the market. But the latency issues made the user-experience wanting. The concept was great in terms of span and coverage and although the cost was going to be high there were some good arguments that satellite would provide coverage where terrestrial (e.g. cable, dsl, fiber) products were missing.

But then the bubble burst and the failure of Iridium wasn't good publicity for all satellite companies no matter how different their business models were, so most of us thought we'll just have to wait until fiber covered all the corners of the globe.

And lo-and-behold, just the other day Japan announces a satellite for high-speed access. And the speed they're hoping to achieve --- are you ready for this? --- 1.2 GB/second. That's about 100x faster than your typical Comcast and Verizon access, so that's very fast. Those HD movies coming down the pipe can be downloaded in less than a minute, instead of hours.

So maybe there's hope for satellite after all. It does make sense especially for some places in Southeast Asia where the terrestrial landscape is composed of islands and laying fiber across those islands is more challenging than being included in the satellite's coverage.

eBay sellers strike next week

After the hollywood strike, we now get an eBay seller strike. Sellers on eBay are going on strike next week to protest a change in fees, feedback and search policies. It wasn't too long ago that eBay was considered a lock-in for longevity and their business competition was floundering. But in the recent year, more and more smaller, niche sites are closing in and making for good competition.

This threat to eBay's business can actually be good for eBay's long term prospects. Competition can push a business to do better. Competition can also serve as a wake-up call to businesses that are no longer as exciting and innovative.

eBay is also big enough to buy out smaller competitors like StubHub which was a smart investment for eBay considering how successful the ticket selling site had become. The recent resignation of eBay's CEO is a signal that eBay is ready to chart a new course after almost 10 years of comfortably being the largest *store* in the world.

Just to round out some of the threats to eBay, Amazon is the surprise sleeper hit. While eBay was enjoying its comfortable leadership status all these years, Amazon was busy building out its technology infrastructure and now they're not only positioned to take on eBay's business, they are also becoming a force in the web services arena --- see Amazon Web Services.

Also hear from long-time eBay sellers who have switched to other services to sell their wares --- eBay backlash: 5 sellers who ditched it.

Zero Heating Cost

I've been reading about the Rocky Mountain Institute recently and how their energy efficient design going back to the 80s cuts their heating cost to almost $0. We're up in the mountains this weekend and it's close to zero degrees outside. The house we're staying in is fully heated and warm inside thanks to propane gas heating. This house doesn't have air-conditioning because the summers here are mild and the fresh mountain air and the breeze is enough to cool the house on a hot summer day. The orientation of the house faces the south, so it's already suited to receive the sun's heat from mid-day till the mid-afternoon to collect the heat.

Take a photo tour of the Rocky Mountain Institute building.

And here's an article from MSN about these green buildings.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

With the user-base of Office 2007 starting to grow, chances are one of these days you may receive a Word 2007 file that you can't open with your Word 2003 or earlier version. The same is true for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 files. This has already caused some problems for some of my clients so what I've been doing is after we install Office 2007, we immediately change the default settings to tell Office 2007 to save the files in Office 2003 format.

But just in case you happen to get one of those Office 2007 files (the file extensions are .docx for Word, .xlsx for Excel and .pptx for PowerPoint) the good news is Microsoft has an Office Compatibility Pack that enables older versions of Office (only up to Office 2000) to open and save in the Office 2007 format. It's an easy install and works very well. My only other wish is that Microsoft includes this as an automatic update so users don't have to separately install it.