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Conclusion
The 3Com/USR Internet Gaming Modem has certainly renewed
my faith in the normal modem, and made me far less interested
in cable modems and DSL. While not exactly the 100k+ connections
that ISDN and above connections can provide, it is certainly providing
everything I need at the moment for web surfing, gaming, and downloading.
At least until broadband is standard, anyway. The modem has boosted
my gaming performance by quite a bit. If you're interested in
actual ping times etc., try reading a lab report (3Com's website
has a link to a rather nice one), but my purpose here was to tell
you what sort of performance gain you'll actually get, not to
recite a list of case-specific statistics. Statistics will vary
from case to case, and there is no precise gauge that will tell
you exactly what sort of performance tweak you'll get. From what
I was able to tell from my personal experience, though, you will
definitely see a performance boost. Even if statistically, the
numbers aren't off by that much, those extra few seconds of jitter-free
movement may very well mean the difference between getting the
kill, and going insane from lag-freezes, packet loss, jittering,
disappearing enemies, spontaneous death, drop outs, and other
daily annoyances that modem gamers face.
| Reviewed
by John
Del Percio |
QUALITY
90 % |
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A solid modem.
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Honestly from the first time I heard
of the modem, I always doubted it. It seemed entirely illogical
that it actually could work. Now I must eat my words. It
worked rather well, and made the future of my online gaming
life (or lack there of) a bit more certain. I'll likely
be more tempted to try multiplayer games for more than a
short period of time. One little note of advice. In the
past, many people, namely in regards to Linux, but not entirely,
have told me time and time again to only get US Robotics
modems, and anything else is a waste of money. I always
chose to ignore this bit of advice in hopes of finding something
a bit less overpriced (and yes, as good as the USR modems
are, I still stand by the fact that they are a bit overpriced),
but after this experience, I can say one thing for certain.
When someone tells you to get USR modems, they're not kidding.
Do it.
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