The competition: TekSavvy

April 8th, 2012

In my previous post I talked about ISP resellers. The reason why Canada and the United States have some of the world’s highest prices for cable, internet and cell phone service is because most providers have a “natural monopoly”. The cable company owns the physical wires that deliver cable to households, and it would cost a fortune for any new company to install their own wires in order to compete with them. Unless they could get 100% of the market, like the incumbent, it would never be profitable to go to the expense of laying their own wires to compete with them. Since monopolies are bad for consumers, the CRTC forces cable and DSL providers to sell the use of their infrastructure to competing ISPs. These smaller ISPs distinguish themselves by offering lowering prices, higher bandwidth caps, or both.

One such reseller is TekSavvy, which offers both DSL and cable internet access using Bell and Rogers/Cogeco/Shaw’s infrastructure. When reselling Bell’s DSL services, they offer a lower price and a higher bandwidth cap (often 3 times higher!), and offer a choice of 75 GB, 300 GB, or unlimited bandwidth in most tiers.

Bell in blue, TekSavvy in light blue

Download Service Price Upload Cap
25 Mbps Fibe 25 64.95 7 Mbps 100
DSL 25 52.99+8.00 7 Mbps 300
DSL 25 Unlimited 77.99+8.00 7 Mbps Unlimited
16 Mbps Fibe 16 53.95 1 Mbps* 65
DSL 16 Lite 42.99 1 Mbps 75
DSL 16 45.99 1 Mbps 300
DSL 16 Unlimited 54.99 1 Mbps Unlimited
12 Mbps Fibe 12 51.95 1 Mbps* 40
DSL 12 Lite 39.99 1 Mbps 75
DSL 12 41.99 1 Mbps 300
DSL 12 Unlimited 54.99 1 Mbps Unlimited
6 Mbps Fibe 6 48.95 1 Mbps 25
DSL 6 Lite 29.99 800 Kbps 75
DSL 6 34.99 800 Kbps 300
DSL 6 Unlimited 45.99 800 Kbps Unlimited
2 Mbps Essential Plus 38.95 800 Kbps 2
DSL 2 Ultra Lite 24.99 800 Kbps 25
DSL 2 Lite 27.99 800 Kbps 75

* 7 Mbps upload speed optional

This is a perfectly sensible approach. You determine the speed that you need, and then the bandwidth cap. With DSL 2 Lite, you get 12.5x the bandwidth of Essential Plus, and then you can triple that for another $3! DSL 6 Lite starts at 3x the bandwidth of Fibe 6, which can be quadrupled for another $5, or made unlimited for less than the cost of Fibe 6′s 25 GB limit. DSL 12 starts with almost doubl the bandwidth of Fibe 12, which can be quadrupled for another $2. DSL 25 starts with triple the bandwidth of Fibe 25 for slightly less money, or you can go nuts and go unlimited at a still reasonable price. The only reason to go with Bell is if you need Fibe 50, which TekSavvy isn’t allowed to offer.

Compared to what I have now (Rogers Express), TekSavvy’s $39.99 DSL 12 Lite would double my upload speed (the metric I care most about), return my download speed to what it was when I signed up, slightly increase my bandwidth cap, and save me $16/month. For an extra $3 I could stay at 16 Mbps to stay close to the 18 Mbps I get from Rogers (not that I care), and still be ahead $13/month. Or I could go splurge and get DSL 25, which would give me 14x the upload speed that I get now, quadruple my monthly bandwidth, and increase my download speeds by almost 40%, and only cost me an extra $5 per month! It’s tempting to save money and only double my upload speed, but I just uploaded VirtualBox 4.1.12 for Windows and Mac to the site, and it took 50 minutes. 25 minutes is a huge improvement, but I could have done it in 3.5 minutes with DSL 25! Those kinds of upload speeds are just too tempting, so I’m willing to pay the extra $5.

You’ll notice that I’m comparing to TekSavvy DSL to Rogers cable, but TekSavvy also resells Rogers cable internet.

Rogers in red, TekSavvy in light blue

Speed Service Price Cap
28 Mbps/1 Mbps Extreme 61.99+7.00 120
Extreme Cable 28 46.95 300
Extreme Cable 28 Unlimited 61.95 Unlimited
18 Mbps/512 Kbps Express 48.99+7.00 70
Express Cable 18 39.95 300
Express Cable 18 Unlimited 54.95 Unlimited
3 Mbps/256 Kbps Lite 35.99+7.00 15
Basic Cable 3 24.95 25
Lite Cable 3 30.95 300
Lite Cable Unlimited 40.95 Unlimited

TekSavvy has the same crappy upload speeds, the same lack of service between 3 and 18 Mbps. In general, you have a choice of 300 GB or unlimited bandwidth, and even the unlimited service costs less than Rogers! If you like your internet slow but want lots of it, Lite Cable 3 offers 20 times the bandwidth of Rogers’ Lite service, but for $12 less. Express Cable 18 offers 4x the bandwidth of Express for $16 less, and Extreme Cable 28 offers 2.5x the bandwidth of Extreme $22 less. The only reason not to go with TekSavvy is if you need Rogers’ useless Extreme Plus service or absurdly expensive Ultimate service.

As for whether you should use TekSavvy’s DSL or cable service (assuming that both are available in your area), the choice seems to be relatively easy. TekSavvy offers the same bandwidth caps on both services, so the difference is upload speed and price. For easy comparison:

TekSavvy cable in pink, DSL in light blue

Speed Service Price Cap
28 Mbps/1 Mbps Extreme Cable 28 46.95 300
Extreme Cable 28 Unlimited 61.95 Unlimited
25 Mbps/7 Mbps DSL 25 52.99+8.00 300
DSL 25 Unlimited 77.99+8.00 Unlimited
18 Mbps/512 Kbps Express Cable 18 39.95 300
Express Cable 18 Unlimited 54.95 Unlimited
16 Mbps/1 Mbps DSL 16 Lite 42.99 75
DSL 16 45.99 300
DSL 16 Unlimited 54.99 Unlimited
12 Mbps/1Mbps DSL 12 Lite 39.99 75
DSL 12 41.99 300
DSL 12 Unlimited 54.99 Unlimited
6 Mbps/800 Kbps DSL 6 Lite 29.99 75
DSL 6 34.99 300
DSL 6 Unlimited 45.99 Unlimited
3 Mbps/256 Kbps Basic Cable 3 24.95 25
Lite Cable 3 30.95 300
Lite Cable Unlimited 40.95 Unlimited
2 Mbps/800 Kbps DSL 2 Ultra Lite 24.99 25
DSL 2 Lite 27.99 75

Basic Cable 3 and DSL 2 are the same price with a 25 GB cap, so the question is whether you want 50% more download speed (Cable 3) or 3x the upload speed (DSL 2). Express Cable 18 is a bit cheaper with a 300 GB cap than DSL 16 is at 75 GB or 300 GB, so there’s no need to go with DSL 16 unless you want to double your upload speed. Extreme Cable 18 and DSL 16 cost the same for unlimited, so take DSL 16 for the higher upload speed. Finally, DSL 25 is significantly more expensive than Extreme Cable 28, but it could still be worth it to have 7x the upload speed. DSL is an extra $14 with a 300 GB cap and $24 more for unlimited. Personally, I need all the upload speed I can get, and don’t need more than 300 GB of bandwidth per month, so I would take DSL 25, but for most people Extreme Cable 28 will likely be good fast enough and a good deal cheaper.

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Speed increases get Rogers back in the game, almost

April 8th, 2012

It’s that time again! Every spring ISPs make changes to their internet packages. Let’s see how that changes things for 2012.

Rogers has killed off Ultra Lite, thus ending the age of sub-Mbps “high speed” internet and forcing me to redefine the tiers in my service table. Rogers has increased the price of almost all of their services, but also increased the download speed and bandwidth cap of most services as well. Ultimate’s download speed has been increased from 50 Mbps to 75 Mbps with no change in price, no doubt because $100 per month is a tough sell at any speed, especially with upload speeds still being capped at a mere 2 Mbps! Extreme Plus increased in price by $2 per month with no other changes. Extreme increased download speeds from 24 Mbps to 28 Mbps, increased the bandwidth cap from 100 GB to 120, and increased the price by $2. There is now virtually no difference between Extreme and Extreme Plus except for the $10 price difference, so this seems like a move to convince Extreme Plus users to downgrade to Extreme! Express increased download speed from 12 Mbps to 18, increased the bandwidth cap from 60 GB to 70, and increased the price by $2. This means that Express now competes with Bell’s Fibe 16 instead of Fibe 12, and leaves Rogers with no service in Tier II; they have a 3 Mbps service and an 18 Mbps service with nothing in between. Finally, Rogers has retired their $3/month DOCSIS 2 modems and replaced them with $7/month DOCSIS 3 modems, effectively raising the price of Lite by $4.

Since Bell names their services after their speed, they don’t have the option of increasing speeds to remain competitive. All they can do is drop prices on existing services while introducing higher speed services at the top, which is indeed what they have done this year. Bell now has a Fibe 50 service which is, unfortunately, the same price as Rogers’ 75 Mbps service. Rogers Ultimate service is 50% faster for uploads and has 2.5x the bandwidth cap, and yet I would still prefer the Bell service for the 5x faster upload speed! Rogers just won’t budge on that front, so if you can live with the bandwidth caps, Bell is still the better choice for uploaders in every tier. Besides the introduction of Fibe 50, Bell decreased the price of almost all of their other services to compete with Rogers’ speed increases, but they also took the opportunity to decrease the bandwidth caps on their services while they were at it. Fibe 25 decreases the bandwidth cap from 125 GB to 100 while dropping the price from $76.95 to $64.95. Fibe 16 decreases the bandwidth cap from 75 GB to 65 while dropping the price from $66.95 to $53.95. Fibe 12 decreases the bandwidth cap from 50 GB to 40 while dropping the price from $56.95 to $51.95. There were no changes to Fibe 6 except the price increase from $46.95 to $48.95. Performance dropped their upload speed from 1 Mbps to 800 Kbps while increasing the price from $46.95 to $48.95, so that seems like sticking it to any customers who don’t have access to Fibe services. Essential Plus increased in price from $36.95 to $38.95. This now leaves Bell in the odd situation of having Fibe 6, 12 and 16 at almost the same price, despite massive differences in speed and bandwidth cap. This is surely intentional, since it would be well worth $3 to double your download speed and almost double your bandwidth cap, and probably worth another $2 to increase your download speed and bandwidth cap another 33% and 65%, respectively. Essential Plus now costs $10 more than Videotron’s Basic service, and its slower and has a 2 GB cap that must be impossible to stay under, even if you only use the internet to surf and email. I can’t imagine anyone using this service when Videotron is 50% faster and has more than double the bandwidth for $10 less, and Rogers offers 50% more speed and 7.5x the bandwidth for only $4 more.

Videotron has increased the price of High Speed from $53.95 to $55.95, and increased Basic from $28.95 to $29.95. I have an asterisk beside the price of Ultimate 60 and Ultimate 30 because they list only one price on their website for those services, but also indicate that the price is based on having at least one other Videotron service. I don’t know if this means that there is a higher, unadvertised price for internet-only customers (seems unlikely), or if you must have other Videotron services to even buy those services! That seems more likely, because who wouldn’t pay the extra dollar to double their download speed? All other Videotron services are discounted if you have other services, so if you need to have another service to get Ultimate 30, Ultimate 30 is actually competing against the $55.95 Ultimate 15 bundle price.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red, Videotron in Dark Yellow

Tier Service Price Speed Cap
VI
(100+ Mbps)		 None
None
Ultimate 120 159.95 120 Mbps/20 Mbps 170/30
V
(50-99 Mbps)		 Fibe 50 106.95 50 Mbps/10 Mbps 100
Ultimate 99.99+7.00 75 Mbps/2 Mbps 250
Ultimate 60 82.95* 60 Mbps/3 Mbps 150
IV
(25-49 Mbps)		 Fibe 25 64.95 25 Mbps/7 Mbps 100
Extreme Plus 71.99+7.00 32 Mbps/1 Mbps 150
Extreme 61.99+7.00 28 Mbps/1 Mbps 120
Ultimate 30 66.95* 30 Mbps/2 Mbps 120
III
(10-24 Mbps)		 Fibe 16 53.95 16 Mbps/1 Mbps** 65
Fibe 12 51.95 12 Mbps/1 Mbps** 40
Express 48.99+7.00 18 Mbps/512 Kbps 70
Ultimate 15 65.95 15 Mbps/1.5 Mbps 90
II
(5-9 Mbps)		 Fibe 6 48.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25
Performance 48.95 6 Mbps/800 Kbps 25
None
High Speed 55.95 8 Mbps/1 Mbps 50
I
(1-4 Mbps)		 Essential Plus 38.95 2 Mbps/800 Kbps 2
Lite 35.99+7.00 3 Mbps/256 Kbps 15
Basic 29.95 3 Mbps/800 Kbps 5

** 7 Mbps upload speed optional

So, on to the conclusions.

For Bell, Fibe 6 seems like an absolutely useless product, since its price makes it uncompetitive with Rogers’ Express service (3x the download speed, almost 3x the bandwidth cap for an extra $7 per month) and Bell’s own Fibe 12 and 16 services. Fibe 12 is also a useless product, given the significant speed and bandwidth advantages of Fibe 16 and Rogers Express. Fibe 16 and Fibe 25 are competitively priced for their download speeds and bandwidth caps, and Fibe 25′s 7 Mbps upload speed blows all competitors out of the water. With 7x the upload speed of Rogers’ Extreme and Extreme Plus and 3.5x the upload speed of Videotron’s Ultimate 30, there is no reason not to go with Fibe 25 if you’re looking for a Tier IV service. Fibe 50 is overpriced compared to Rogers and Videotron’s faster Tier V services and much higher bandwidth caps, but if you can live with the cap, Fibe 50′s 10 Mbps upload speed is 5x and 3x faster than Rogers and Videotron, respectively. With 7 Mbps upload speeds an option on Fibe 16 and Fibe 12 as well, Bell is the clear choice for content creators and other uploaders, but they risk losing that market by having the lowest bandwidth cap in every tier.

For Rogers, Ultimate is now much more appropriately priced, though I doubt there’s much market for $100/month internet service. Extreme Plus is too expensive and too slow to compete with Fibe 25 and Ultimate 30, and even Rogers’ own Extreme service. If you have Extreme Plus, you lose almost nothing by downgrading and get an extra $10/month in your wallet. Express is competitive with Bell and Videotron if you don’t care about upload speed, but if you do, Videotron will give you 3x the upload speed, and Bell will give you 2x/14x the upload speed for a similar price. It’s just hard to recommend any Rogers service to anyone except for heavy downloaders, since their bandwidth caps tend to be the highest in each tier. This is especially the case for Lite. Now that you have to rent the $7/month DOCSIS 3 modem instead of the $3/month DOCSIS 2 modem, Lite is substantially more expensive than other Tier I services, but its 15 GB bandwidth cap dwarfs Bell and Videotron’s unusable 2 and 5 GB caps, respectively, and is even competitive Bell’s Fibe 6/Performance 25 GB cap, which it also competes with on price. Lite is basically a Tier I service with a Tier I.5 price, but I just don’t see how anyone could use less than 2 GB of bandwidth per month in the age of rich content and multi-megapixel cameras. Lite rules Tier I, unless you can get by with a 5 GB bandwidth cap, in which case Videotron’s Basic service is much cheaper.

Videotron continues to be the only provider with 75+ Mbps download or 10+ Mbps upload speeds out of the Big 3, and I’m sure that both of their Ultimate 120 customers appreciate that. All of their other services are competitively priced, except that Bell offers much faster upload speeds from Tier IV and up (and optionally in Tier III).

If I was a webmaster (I am) whose website made a lot of money (I’m not), I would pick Ultimate 120 for its huge upload speed. Since I’m not made of money, I would be thrilled to have a 7 or 10 Mbps upload speed from Bell instead of the 512 Kbps speed I get from Rogers, who I locked in for a year with (hey, it’s hard to turn down 3 free months of everything, but when my contract is up, I’m out of here!). Videotron is a great middle ground choice in terms of speed, bandwidth cap and price. Bell is the obvious choice if you need upload speed (and can’t afford Ultimate 120) and don’t need a huge bandwidth cap. Rogers is only a good choice if you need a huge bandwidth cap, but at least they have a niche. But really, if you only care about the bandwidth cap, why not get unlimited bandwidth from one of the companies that resell Bell and Rogers/Cogeco/Shaw/Videotron internet service? Any company that resells Bell’s DSL service will offer much higher upload speeds in addition to unlimited or nearly unlimited bandwidth! I’ll talk more about this in my next post.

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Bell speeds up, Rogers drops out

November 28th, 2011

I’ve moved back to Ontario, so I need to choose an ISP again. 14 months after my last ISP comparison, some encouraging improvements have occurred.

Rogers is still the only ISP to offer a Tier I service, though Videotron offers Tier II speed at a Tier I price. Videotron’s Basic service has gotten 20% faster for downloads, 100% faster for uploads, and nearly doubled the bandwidth cap, all for $1 more than it cost a year ago.

Videotron’s High Speed service has gotten slightly faster in both directions and nearly doubled the bandwidth cap, but the price has risen considerably, making it a Tier III.5 service with a Tier IV price.

Rogers Express has increased to 12 Mbps to match Fibe 12, but still only offers half of the upload speed. Extreme has been bumped from 15 Mbps to 24 Mbps, with a 25% larger bandwidth cap at the same price. Extreme Plus has jumped from 25 Mbps to 32 Mbps with an extra 25 GB bandwidth cap at the same price. Ultimate is still the same speed and price, but the bandwidth cap has been increase from 175 GB to 250 GB.

Videotron’s Ultimate 50 has become Ultimate 60 and tripled the upload speed to 3 Mbps, all for only $1 more. They’ve also introduced the first Tier VIII product, a 120 Mbps download service with a massive 20 Mbps upload speed. Unique to Ultimate 120 is a split bandwidth cap of 170 GB downstream and only 30 GB upstream. At those speeds, you could use up your monthly bandwidth in as little as 12 hours!

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red, Videotron in Dark Yellow

Tier Service Price Speed Cap
VIII
(>64 Mbps)		 None
None
Ultimate 120 159.95 120 Mbps/20 Mbps 170/30
VII
(33-64 Mbps)		 None
Ultimate 99.99+7.00 50 Mbps/2 Mbps 250
Ultimate 60 82.95 60 Mbps/3 Mbps 150
VI
(17-32 Mbps)		 Fibe 25 76.95 25 Mbps/7 Mbps 125
Extreme Plus 69.99+7.00 32 Mbps/1 Mbps 150
Ultimate 30 66.95 30 Mbps/2 Mbps 120
V
(13-16 Mbps)		 Fibe 16 66.95 16 Mbps/1 Mbps* 75
Extreme 59.99 24 Mbps/1 Mbps 100
Ultimate 15 65.95 15 Mbps/1.5 Mbps 90
IV
(9-12 Mbps)		 Fibe 12 56.95 12 Mbps/1 Mbps* 50
Express 46.99 12 Mbps/512 Kbps 60
None
III
(5-8 Mbps)		 Fibe 6 46.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25
Performance 46.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25
None
High Speed 53.95 8 Mbps/1 Mbps 50
II
(1-4 Mbps)		 Essential Plus 36.95 2 Mbps/800 Kbps 2
Lite 35.99 3 Mbps/256 Kbps 15
Basic 28.95 3 Mbps/800 Kbps 5
I
(<1 Mbps)		 None
Ultra-Lite 27.99 500 Kbps/256 Kbps 2
None

So, on to the conclusions. At first glance it looks like Bell’s prices have gone up, and they have, but only by a dollar or two. Instead of a monthly modem rental of $3.95 or $6.95, they now charge a one-time modem rental of $49.95 which is likely to be waived through promotions. Videotron still doesn’t charge a modem rental fee, leaving Rogers as the last company that requires you to rent or purchase the modem that you must have in order to use the service. Seriously, what’s up with that?

As usual, Rogers always has the slowest upload speeds. At lower tiers, Rogers offers 256 Kbps uploads while their competitors offer 800 Kbps. At middle tiers, Rogers offers 512 Kbps uploads while competitors offers 1 Mbps. Yes, Rogers 12 Mbps Tier IV service has 36% slower upload speeds than Bell and Videotron’s Tier II services. That’s just unacceptable. At Tier VI, Videotron offers 2x the upload speed asRogers, andBell offers 7x the upload speed!

Rogers tends to have the fastest download speed for the price in each tier, making them good for content consumers, but Rogers is simply not worth consideration for content creators. What’s particularly bizarre about this is that the purpose of limiting upload speeds has traditionally been to prevent BitTorrent and P2P applications from uploading massive amounts of data. This isn’t an issue for Rogers because Rogers uses Deep Packet Inspection to limit P2P upload speeds to a mere 80 Kbps! With that threat eliminated, why is Rogers unable to offer a comparable upload speed to their competitors? (Also, why does the CRTC allow throttling of any legal internet traffic?) Anyway, if you need to upload stuff, stay away from Rogers. The one and only consideration to the contrary is that Rogers tends to have the highest bandwidth cap in each tier.

A year ago, there were only two services that offered upload speeds in excess of 1 Mbps: Rogers’ Ultimate (2 Mbps) and Fibe 25 (7 Mbps). Now we can add Videotron’s Ultimate 16 (1.5 Mbps), Ultimate 30 (2 Mbps), Ultimate 60 (3 Mbps), and Ultimate 120 (20 Mbps). If you want to upload stuff in a hurry, Videotron is a real blessing. If you don’t live in Quebec, never fear because Bell has just introduced a new service that has completely changed the game: for an extra $5 per month, Fibe 12 and Fibe 16 can be upgraded to 7 Mbps upload speeds! Let’s look at Tiers IV again to see how this shakes thing up.

Tier Service Price Speed Cap
VI
(17-32 Mbps)		 Fibe 25 76.95 25 Mbps/7 Mbps 125
Extreme Plus 69.99+7.00 32 Mbps/1 Mbps 150
Ultimate 30 66.95 30 Mbps/2 Mbps 120
V
(13-16 Mbps)		 Fibe 16+ 71.95 16 Mbps/7 Mbps 75
Fibe 16 66.95 16 Mbps/1 Mbps 75
Extreme 59.99 24 Mbps/1 Mbps 100
Ultimate 15 65.95 15 Mbps/1.5 Mbps 90
IV
(9-12 Mbps)		 Fibe 12+ 61.95 12 Mbps/7 Mbps 50
Fibe 12 56.95 12 Mbps/1 Mbps 50
Express 46.99+3.00 12 Mbps/512 Kbps 60
None

If you’re a content creator or heavy uploader, Bell now offers 7 Mbps upload speeds on their 12 Mbps to 25 Mbps download services, which blows their competitors out of the water. It is 7 times faster than Rogers and 3.5 times faster than Videotron at any tier that anyone actually buys. Videotron still has good upload speeds and offers lower prices in Tiers V and VI, but if you want to upload a lot of stuff, it’s hard not to recommend Bell. If you don’t care about upload speeds at all and do care about price, then Rogers wins the price war in Tier IV. 12 Mbps is probably all the speed you’ll ever need, and it will save you $7 to $12 per month, which makes up for Bell’s 2x/14x upload speed advantage.

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LodgeNet: SNES edition

January 28th, 2011

I spent my Christmas Eve in a hotel in North Bay, Ontario, and they had a LodgeNet controller. This one caught my eye because it looked more like a SNES controller than a N64 controller. I had read there LodgeNet once served Super Nintendo games, so I decided to investigate.

I think it cost $5.99 per hour to play, and you get your choice of 17 games that you can switch between at any time (20 if you consider Super Mario All-Stars to be four games).

Super Mario World F-Zero Dr. Mario Donkey Kong Country 2
Super Punch-Out Blackthorne Super Street Figher II Super Mario All-Stars
Vegas Stakes Kirby’s Dream Course Hangman* Hal’s Hole in One Golf
Postcard Battle* Final Fight The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past The Lost Vikings 2
Noughts & Crosses*

* “Games never released” (homebrew?)

So, I tried it out, and the games did look exactly like they did on the SNES… except that the picture was so covered with interference lines that I could barely see the screen. I was able to beat a few leagues of F-Zero, but it was a really unsatisfactory game experience. Cable channels were perfectly clear, but the games looked like the coaxial cable needed tightening (I checked, and it was fine).

It’s a bit harder to justify shelling out for the ability to play SNES games when there are LodgeNet devices that have N64 games, but if you’re a REALLY retro gamer, this represents a pretty good selection of the SNES library.

It has The Legend of Zelda, a Donkey Kong Country game, Super Street Fighter II, and all of the Super Mario games, except for SMW2: Yoshi’s Island, which required the enhanced version of the Super F/X chip. Super F/X was one of many chips that were added to game cartridges (rather than the SNES console) to enhance SNES games. LodgeNet would either have the games stored in ROMs inside the SNES hardware, or it might download the games from a hard drive; there isn’t a SNES with 17 cartridge slots somewhere. Without cartridges, the Super F/X chip would have to either be built into the LodgeNet hardware or emulated with software. That explains why there’s no Star Fox (original Super F/X chip), Super Mario Kart (DSP-1/1B chip), or Super Mario RPG (SA-1 chip).

Anyway, it was interesting to see this first generation of LodgeNet hardware still in service at the end of 2010. If you’re at a hotel that has one and you’re bored enough, you should be able to find something worth playing on it.

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Rogers reduces bandwidth caps on two of its plans

August 15th, 2010

It’s been about 6 months since Rogers ceased to be competitive as an internet provider. Based on their prices and speeds at the time, there was no reason for anyone to consider Rogers as their ISP. I expected them to do something about it much faster, but they seemed to be content to not offer a competitive product.

Their strangest product was Extreme, which had the same download speed as Express, and justified its $13 premium by doubling the upload speed to a mere 1 Mbps, and increasing the bandwidth cap to 95 GB. Extreme just didn’t seem to make any sense, and it left Rogers without a Tier V internet speed. The logical thing for them to do was to increase the speed to compete with Fibe 16.

So, half a year later, Rogers has finally increased the download speed of Extreme to 15 Mbps. At the same time, they reduced the bandwidth cap to 80 GB. Leaving the bandwidth cap at 95 GB would have been the one thing that made it more attractive than Fibe 16, but instead the products are now essentially identical.

At the same time, Rogers reduced the bandwidth cap of their Lite service by a whopping 40% to 15 GB. That’s still much more than competing Tier II products, but they needed that extra bandwidth to justify the higher price and much lower upload speed. Bell’s Essential Plus still uploads more than 3 times faster than Lite, and for less money. And believe it or not, I’ve been living with a 2 GB bandwidth cap, without exceeding it, for several months now.

Since moving to Quebec, I’ve been on Videotron’s Basic service. I don’t know if it’s because of the apartment building, or what the explanation is, but apparently Videotron isn’t able to properly throttle my internet speed, so I can upload at 1 Mbps while paying for the Basic service. After living with Rogers’ 512 Kbps service for years, it’s wonderful to finally have a decent upload speed. With a 2 GB bandwidth cap, I no longer download large files, but I haven’t had to make any major sacrifices yet.

So, Videotron is for real, and I’ve added them to the service chart for comparison.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red, Videotron in Dark Yellow

Tier Service Price Speed Cap
VII None
Ultimate $99.99+7.00 50 Mbps/2 Mbps 175 GB
Ultimate 50 $81.95 50 Mbps/1 Mbps 125 GB
VI Fibe 25 $67.95+6.95 25 Mbps/7 Mbps 75 GB
Extreme Plus $69.99+7.00 25 Mbps/1 Mbps 125 GB
Ultimate 30 $65.95 30 Mbps/1 Mbps 100 GB
V Fibe 16 $61.95+3.95 16 Mbps/1 Mbps 75 GB
Extreme $59.99+3.00 15 Mbps/1 Mbps 80 GB
Ultimate 15 $54.95 15 Mbps/1 Mbps 60 GB
IV Fibe 12 $51.95+3.95 12 Mbps/1 Mbps 50 GB
Express $46.99+3.00 10 Mbps/512 Kbps 60 GB
None
III Fibe 6 $41.95+3.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25 GB
Performance $41.95+3.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25 GB
None
High-Speed $42.95 7.5 Mbps/820 Kbps 30 GB
II Essential Plus $31.95+3.95 2 Mbps/800 Kbps 2 GB
Lite $35.99+3.00 3 Mbps/256 Kbps 15 GB
Basic $27.95 2.5 Mbps/400 Kbps 3 GB
I None
Ultra Lite $27.99+3.00 500 Kbps/256 Kbps 2 GB
None

The first thing you’ll notice is that Videotron doesn’t charge a modem rental, so the price they list is actually the price! This is so refreshingly, astonishingly honesty that I’m almost at a loss for words. Then my joy turns to anger: how dare Rogers and Bell not be this upfront about the cost of their services? It’s the same bullshit with their cell phone plans. Everyone should list the full price of their product upfront; it should be the law.

Starting at the bottom of the chart, you’ll see that Videotron doesn’t offer a “high-speed” internet option in Tier I, though they do offer dial-up. Rogers is the only ISP that thinks that 500 Kbps still qualifies as high-speed. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

Videotron’s Basic service costs the same as Rogers’ Ultra Lite service ($3 less since there’s no modem rental), despite being 5 times faster for upload, 50% faster for download, and a 50% higher bandwidth cap. Videotron’s Tier II service is cheaper than Rogers’ Tier I service! It otherwise fits nicely between Roger’s Lite and Bell’s Essential Plus in terms of download and upload speeds, though for considerably less money ($8 less than Bell and $8/$11 less than Rogers, depending on whether or not you own your modem).

Rogers still doesn’t have a Tier III service, which is baffling when you consider that this must be the core market segment. How can they not afford to have a product in the sweet spot for speed and price? As a shareholder, I really want to kick someone at Rogers in the ass.

Anyway, Videotron is king of Tier III, coming in 25% faster for downloads, 16% higher bandwidth cap, about 20% slower for uploads, but $3 cheaper per month. Bell’s faster upload speed could definitely be worth more to some people than a 25% faster download speed, but with the higher bandwidth cap and lower price, I’d still probably stick with Videotron. I don’t know if I’d notice the difference in upload speeds all that much, but the extra bandwidth and extra money in my bank account would be nice.

Videotron doesn’t have a Tier IV service, but the progression from 7.5 Mbps to 15 Mbps does seem logical. Frankly, Tier IV seems like a pretty useless tier. It just makes sense for each tier to double in speed. Where’s Videotron’s Tier III product was basically Tier 3.5, I can forgive this omission.

Videotron’s Ultimate 15 service is the first one to not show a clear advantage over Bell. While Ultimate 15 is the cheapest Tier V service, it also has the lowest bandwidth cap by 15 to 20 GB. If you can live with that, it’s $11 cheaper than Bell and $5/$8 cheaper than Rogers. I was living with a 60 GB cap under Rogers’ Express service, so I could live under Ultimate 15′s cap.

Ultimate 30, on the other hand, is a tough sell. On the one hand, it’s extremly cheap, coming in $9 cheaper than Bell and $4/$11 cheaper than Rogers. In fact, Ultimate 30 is only $1 more than Fibe 16, despite downloading twice as fast and having a 33% faster download speed. There is no reason for anyone to buy Fibe 16 if they Ultimate 30 is available to them. As a Tier VI competitor, though, the download speed is 20% faster than Rogers and Bell, but the bandwidth cap is 25 GB lower than Rogers’ Extreme Plus service. While the bandwidth cap is 25 GB higher than Fibe 25, Fibe 25′s upload speed is 7 times faster! To be sure, $75 per month is a lot higher than $66, but the upload speed is 7 times faster! I can’t help but drool at the thought of how much time I could save while uploading thousands of files totalling more than 2 GB to my website with Fibe 25. RGB Classic Games has about 2.5 GB worth of files. For comparison:

2.5 GB @ 512 Kbps = 11.4 hours
2.5 GB @ 1 Mbps = 5.7 hours
2.5 GB @ 7 Mbps = 49 minutes

So, as a webmaster uploading a website, the difference between Fibe 16 and any other product available in Canada (except for Rogers’s absurdly priced Ultimate plan) is the difference between tying up my internet connection all day and uploading in the background while I watch an episode of Firefly on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Moving on to Tier VII, Videotron is $18/$25 per month cheaper than a competing service that is so expensive that only a handful people could possibly subscribe to. Based on the price difference, I suspect that a small number of people actually subscribe to Ultimate 50, but should they? Rogers’ Ultimate service has double the upload speed and an extra 50 GB of bandwidth. Again, for myself, I would choose Fibe 25 over either of them, even it wasn’t $7 cheaper than Videotron and $32/$39 cheaper than Rogers, just for the 7 Mbps upload speed. It is absurd that a Tier VI product is 3.5 to 7 times faster than the two Tier VII products. For that kind of money, would you not expect the ultimate internet experience? Again, that 75 GB cap is scary, being 50 GB lower than Videotron and 100 GB lower than Rogers, but if you can live with that limit, no one should consider buying Ultimate or Ultimate 50.

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LodgeNet

August 15th, 2010

I recently stayed at hotel during my family reunion, and they had one of those LodgeNet N64 controllers. I’ve seen them for a few years, but I’ve never bothered to play. This time I decided to investigate.

It costs $6.99 per hour to play, and you get your choice of 31 games that you can switch between at any time.

Mario Kart 64 Super Smash Bros. Mario Tennis
Super Mario 64 Mario Party 3 Paper Mario
Kirby 64 Excitebike 64 Hydro Thunder
Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA Pokemon Snap Mario Golf
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Star Fox 64 Donkey Kong 64
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 1080 Snowboarding
Mortal Kombat 4 Yoshi’s Story The New Tetris
Dr. Mario 64 Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Rampage 2: Universal Tour
Wave Race 64 Virtual Pool 64 Gauntlet Legends
F-Zero X Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits Pilotwings 64
Virtual Chess

If you were stuck playing only one game, this would definitely not be a good deal. Having the option to switch games makes it worth it, in my opinion. I mean, at $7 per hour, you wouldn’t want to play for hours, but a single session is pretty decent entertainment for only $7. I was able to get about 30 stars in Super Mario 64, or I could have beaten Star Fox 64 and had time left over to win a game of chess and play a few rounds of Midway’s Great Arcade Hits.

I was terrified of going past my hour and getting billed for another one, but the system lets you know when it’s time to pay for another hour. Unfortunately, the system does not save your progress, so you can’t beat a game like Super Mario 64 or one of the Zelda games unless you can beat them in one sitting.

Super Mario 64 looked about the same on LodgeNet as it does on a normal Nintendo 64, and the controller is basically identical to a normal N64 controller (analog joystick and all) so the experience is not inferior to the real N64 experience.

All things considered, I was pretty happy with my $7 expenditure, and this proves that the N64 has held up very well over the years. The jump from 2D to 3D was huge but, frankly, games haven’t come nearly as far in the 14 years since the N64 came out. After nearly a decade and a half, those games are still fun and don’t look ridiculously crude or ugly by any means. Certainly you can’t compare F-Zero X to F-Zero GX, but the gameplay and graphics are not so dated as to render N64 games unplayable.

If you stay at a hotel that has LodgeNet and have $7 to spend, I recommend a quick trip down memory lane.

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Paralympics

April 2nd, 2010

All of the Olympic torchbearers received an emailed invitation to attend the Paralympic Torch Relay, which just happened to begin in my home town, the nation’s capital! We were encouraged to wear our torchbearer uniforms, and some people even brought their torch!

The opening of the Paralympic Torch Relay was an amazing experience that was attended by political leaders and celebrities. I got to chat with my “boss”, Stockwell Day, the president of the Treasury Board. The Prime Minister gave a speech, and the Leader of the Opposition was present, as was former Ontario premier and current MP Bob Rae. Comedian Rick Mercer was an honorary torchbearer, and he came over and mugged with the torchbearers when we got together for a group photo, and I got to shake his hand!

Anyway, here’s some of the group photos.

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Much ado about fiber

February 22nd, 2010

If you’ve been watching the Olympics in Canada, you’ve probably noticed that Bell has changed the name of most of their internet services to Fibe. That’s Fibe as in fiber optic.

If you don’t know too much about broadband delivery, this probably sounds exciting. Alas, this is nothing special. Most of the telecommunications infrastructure in this country was already fiber optic, so don’t get excited. The reason why we haven’t all be using gigabit internet at home all this time is that a network connection is only as fast as its slowest point. The connection to your home, and within your home, is where things get slow. Cable companies have aggressively developed and adopted the DOCSIS standard to allow cable connections to support high speed internet, while telephone companies have used a standard called ADSL, or some variation on DSL.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the acronyms and minutiae. The news is that Bell has renamed Performance to Fibe 6, Max 12 becomes Fibe 12, Max 16 becomes Fibe 16, and there’s a new speed called Fibe 25. I don’t know how much I like the name Fibe, but I really like the fact that the speed is in the name. That’s a little thing I like to call honesty, as opposed to the meaningless marketing names Bell and its competitors have used until recently.

So, here’s my revised Tier comparison. There’s a Tier VII now because I’ve decided that 16 Mbps doesn’t compete with 25. That means that Bell has a Tier V product and Rogers doesn’t.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red

Tier Service Price Speed Cap
VII None
Ultimate $99.99+7.00 50 Mbps/2 Mbps 175 GB
VI Fibe 25 $67.95+6.95 25 Mbps/7 Mbps 75 GB
Extreme Plus $69.99+7.00 25 Mbps/1 Mbps 125 GB
V Fibe 16 $61.95+3.95 16 Mbps/1 Mbps 75 GB
None
IV Fibe 12 $51.95+3.95 12 Mbps/1 Mbps 50 GB
Extreme $59.99+3.00 10 Mbps/1 Mbps 95 GB
Express $46.99+3.00 10 Mbps/512 Kbps 60 GB
III Fibe 6 $41.95+3.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25 GB
Performance $41.95+3.95 6 Mbps/1 Mbps 25 GB
None
II Essential Plus $31.95+3.95 2 Mbps/800 Kbps 2 GB
Lite $35.99+3.00 3 Mbps/256 Kbps 25 GB
I None
Ultra Lite $25.99+3.00 500 Kbps/256 Kbps 2 GB

Oh, did I say that Fibe 6 replaces Performance? Bell is still keeping a product called Performance, even though it’s identical to Fibe 6. I don’t know why.

Anyway, did you notice anything else about the change? All prices went up $2! But they only just raised their prices a few months ago! Also notice that the modem rental on Fibe 25 is a whopping $6.95 per month, like the DOCSIS 3.0 modem/router from Rogers. Bell’s prices are still better than Rogers, but the price gap is closing. It’s strange that it’s Bell that’s closing it rather than Rogers.

Despite the price increases, Bell still beats Rogers on speed and price in every tier. The only place Rogers is still winning is their bandwidth cap.

Bell doesn’t have anything that competes with Rogers Ultimate service at 50 Mbps, but how large can the market for $100 per month internet be anyway? But where Rogers only recently became the first major ISP in Canada to offer a 2 Mbps upload service — which is only available on their absurdly expensive 50 Mbps download service — Bell has just blown them out of the water by offering a 7 Mbps upload speed on their 25 Mbps download service! This might not mean much if it was another $100/month service that no one is ever going to buy, but Fibe 25 is only $6 more per month than Fibe 16. If you’re a webmaster and do as much uploading as I do, there’s no reason not to buy Fibe 25 if you were considering Fibe 16. The only problem is that scary 75 GB bandwidth cap. Rogers 25/1 service has an extra 50 GB per month.

In conclusion, I’m super excited about Canada’s first 7 Mbps upload service. As I concluded before, there’s absolutely no reason to buy internet access from Rogers any more, now that Bell is faster and cheaper in every tier. As a Rogers shareholder, I’m getting a bit fed up that Rogers is making no effort to be competitive. In fact, I’m pretty sure that they’re legally obliged to be competitive to protect their shareholders’ interests. What are they thinking?

I don’t know what to say, folks. I’ve held out all this time, but it’s never been more tempting to switch to Bell. Switching from Express to Fibe 25 would cost an extra $24.91 per month, but my download speed would increase 2.5x, and my upload speed would increase 14x! With the discount for the first 12 months and the bundle discount, this might just be the product that will convince consumers that $75 per month for internet access is reasonable.

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Chrome still needs some work

February 21st, 2010

When I started using the internet, Netscape Navigator was king. Internet Explorer 3.0 was a great browser, and by IE 4.0 it was clearly the better browser. That was when I left Netscape.

For years, I used IE exclusively, until I started hearing about Firefox. I was a bit skeptical that an open source browser could beat a Microsoft product, and I’m wary of betas, so I didn’t try it until 1.0 came out. I downloaded Firefox 1.0 the first day it came out, and I haven’t been an IE user since. It was like night and day.

IE 6 was old, so it wasn’t that surprising that Firefox was faster. But far more than that, Firefox changed the way people browsed the internet. When I tried tabbed browsing for the first time, I could never go back. No more opening multiple windows for me. Firefox was faster, had a cleaner interface, was more standards compliant, and had tabbed browsing. It was no contest. I can’t remember a v1.0 of any product being superior to a product as mature as Internet Explorer, so I was quite impressed.

I’ve been more than loyal to Firefox, I’ve been an evangelist. I used to promote the use of Firefox. I was active in converting my friends and co-workers. It was about more than the fact that Firefox was a better browser; it was about the fact that it was open source, a concept I enthusiastically support. So, as Opera, Safari and Chrome have made waves, I stuck with Firefox. Sure, I gave Opera a try one time, but I didn’t like it and couldn’t be bothered to acquire a taste for it. I was a Firefox fanatic through and through.

I don’t know how many people were aware of it, but there was a race to pass the Acid3 test. When Safari and Chrome were pushing 100%, Firefox was in the low 90s, and Internet Explorer 7 was at 14%. Firefox 3.6 hits 94%, and IE 8 improved to 20%. Seriously, 20%?

More and benchmarks have been coming out, testing things like JavaScript rendering speed — which is the new arms race in the browser world — and memory usage. Chrome and Safari have been consistently beating Firefox in JavaScript rendering speed, and both of them pass Acid3. Internet Explorer, the most popular browser in the world, continues to come in dead last in every benchmark. It’s kind of sad, really.

Anyway, I finally gave in and tried out Chrome 3.0, and… I’ve switched to Chrome. I have trouble using Firefox now. Firefox wastes too much space on the navigation menu and buttons and stuff, whereas Chrome devotes almost the entire screen to the web page. Chrome feels faster, looks better, and takes up less screen real estate. It wasn’t a hard choice, really.

Nevertheless, I have some serious complaints about Chrome, and I’m going to air them now, because they ought to be easy enough to fix. Once fixed, Chrome will be the obvious browser of choice.

1. Chrome crashes. A lot.

Like, almost every time I use it. I’ll type in a web address and get,  ”Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed”. It’s a daily occurrence, and very surprising.

For the record, this never happened when I briefly used Chrome before switching from Windows XP Professional SP3. Now I’m using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, and a lot of my software isn’t working very well any more, including DOSBox of all things, so maybe Chrome doesn’t like 64-bit operating systems yet. Still, that’s no excuse since we’re all going to be using one soon. In 12 years of surfing, I’ve never had a browser crash as often as Chrome. Fortunately, it remembers what pages I was on and brings them back up when it reloads.

2. No multi-tab closure warning.

Sometimes when I’m done with a page, I accidentally hit close on the whole browser instead of the tab that I’m done with. Whenever you try to close the browser while multiple tabs are open in Internet Explorer or Firefox, the browser checks to make sure that you really want to close all of your open tabs, like this.

Chrome, on the other hand, just shuts down, taking half a dozen pages worth of research with it. Why the hell doesn’t it warn you when you’re closing multiple tabs?

3. No built-in RSS reader.

Seriously? I mean, I could understand if they were still on version 1 or 2 and hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but this is version 4 for crying out loud! No RSS reader? Even Internet Explorer has an RSS reader!

4. Full-screen browsing.

I mentioned previously that I don’t like my browser taking a lot of space away from the pages that I’m viewing. Since Firefox was pretty bad for that, I got into the habit of putting my browser in full-screen mode. Full-screen mode in Firefox is great. If I want to type in a new URL, I put my mouse cursor at the top of the screen and the awesome bar drops down. No need to leave full-screen mode to go to a new website. Not so with Chrome! Once you’re in full-screen mode, the address bar is gone! When I put my mouse at the top of the screen, an overlay drops down reminding me that I can press F11 to leave full-screen mode, or you can just click on the link in the overlay. Well, why doesn’t the overlay have an address bar in it? I shouldn’t have to leave full-screen mode to go to a different website. Very annoying.

5. No awesome bar.

I was skeptical when I first heard about the awesome bar, but it’s so awesome that it almost prevented me from leaving Firefox. In Firefox, you can type any part of an address into the awesome bar and Firefox will figure out what site you want to go to within a few keystrokes. If I want to go to my blog, for instance, I start typing the word “blog” and Firefox suggests www.classicdosgames.com/blog/.

Chrome, on the other hand, will only search for addresses that begin with whatever you’re typing. Typing “blog” will do absolutely nothing. I have to start typing “www.classicdosgames.com”, but a dozen other pages from the site that I visit more frequently will come up first. I have to get all the way to www.classicdosgames.com/b before it will suggest my blog. Very annoying. The awesome bar is, in fact, so awesome that I would immediately return to Firefox if they could make it look as nice as Chrome. You know, tabs across the top and stuff. The awesome bar is simply the fastest way to go to any website that you visit frequently, and you can find any website you’ve previously visited if you remember any part of the address. I often forget the domain name of a site that I don’t visit frequently, and Chrome is no help at all in that situation. Firefox will find it every time.

6. Lack of recognition

This one isn’t Chrome’s fault. A lot of websites don’t recognize Chrome yet, so sometimes I get an error message like this.

An older browser? My version of Chrome is 11 days old! Some websites suggest that I might want to upgrade to Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2. Some websites won’t let me proceed unless I switch to another browser. Now, maybe I’m being too logical here, but if someone is visiting with a browser that you don’t recognize, wouldn’t that mean that the browser is too new? Since a new browser is likely to be at least as standards compliant as any of the current browsers, websites should assume that an unrecognized browser is fully capable of running whatever content they have. Anyone who knows anything about the technology industry should know that any product too new to be on your list of supported browsers is going to be a supported browser. Chrome isn’t even a new browser any more, and yet a number of websites still give me this crap.

So, there’s my wish list. Chrome is the fastest, cleanest, most standards compliant browser in the world. I just want these five little things fixed and it would be perfect. Get back to me on that, Google.

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Carrying the Olympic torch

January 3rd, 2010

I got to carry the Olympic torch on December 12 as part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic relay!

The camera adds 30 pounds in these pictures. I was afraid that I was going to be standing outside for hours and freezing, so I wore many, many layers of clothing. As it turned out, I was only outside for a few minutes, so I didn’t need most of them.

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