Any day now we'll all have broadband access to the Internet from our living rooms. Yep, we've been hearing that for a while now. Trouble is, an awful lot of backyards still need to be dug up. And don't think ISDN's going to save us anytime soon. Telcos have been dragging their feet on that one for 20 years. But there's a new choice, one not restricted to an earthbound infrastructure.
DirecPC service from Hughes Network Systems beams data to your home via satellite. Its Net access speeds ramp up to a sizzling 400 Kbps; three times faster than ISDN, twelve times faster than your pokey old 28.8 modem. The first time I downloaded a 1.5-Mbyte file in under a minute - child, it was like the shades fell off my eyes. Hughes provides, at no added cost, some real-time video content (CNN Headline News, as well as finance and sports tickers). With an MPEG card, you can watch your news, crisp in a quarter-sized window. Neat, but personally I'd rather watch the news on full-screen TV.
Hughes also offers a 1-Mbps delivery package, more than 20 times faster than its basic service. It is optimized for blasting big files in next to no time. Hughes thought this service would drive the platform: it was going to pump updated software onto every enterprise desktop overnight. But then the Web exploded, and it's the standard Net access that keeps the order phone ringing off the hook.
Fast access doesn't come cheap. For US$1,295, you get a li'l oblong satellite dish to install on an exterior wall, a satellite decoder built into a PC adapter card, Windows software to handle installation, registration - hell, it even helps you point the dish. Download up to 30 Mbytes of data per month for $15.95, or 130 Mbytes for $39.95. Hughes will cut you a break on the dish ($700) if you commit to the 130-Mbyte package for a year. Course, you still have to pay an ISP.
So far, this fat pipe is one-way. Your information requests (mouse clicks) are sent the old-fashioned way via modem and telephone lines. When a request comes into the Hughes Network Operations Center, the data gets pumped through the satellite to your dish.
So while @Home delays and Teledesic waits to clear liftoff, DirecPC is the fastest game on the planet. If you've got a Wintel box, 486 or better, running at 66 MHZ or faster, with a minimum of 8 Mbytes of RAM and 500 Mbytes free on your hard drive, you're ready to leave your lawns intact and start getting your data straight from space.
DirecPC: US$1,295 for start-up kit. Hughes Network Systems: (800) 347 3272, on the Web at www.direcpc.com/.
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