I had Comcast for their 6 month/19.95 deal. Being a student I dropped them right before that deal ended. I searched around for a DSL company that was reasonable, and Yahoo/SBC has a great price but isn't available in my neck of the woods. I went with Verizon DSL and I don't notice any difference in speed compared to cable. I download music and all sorts of encyclopedia related videos and it is more than fast enough for me. I don't do any gaming and very rarely upload anything large, so I don't have a comment regarding the upload speed disparity.
I think the whole bandwidth thing is what computers are supposedly getting into. At a certain point, the technology is so much faster than what you need that you won't notice a difference. Only after media catches up to the speeds offered will you notice a huge difference between the speeds. Of course I'm not big into computers and have no clue what my distance is from the central station and all that. All I know is that DSL works just fine for me and is half what cable costs. For what I need, I can live with not having the "fastest" internet available. A 5 MB song typically takes 15-20 secs through Sony Connect. Best of luck.

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2004 Chrysler Crossfire