By: Fran Watson

Was it just a few short years ago that life on the internet began to take on a life of its own?
Was it just a few short years ago that I thought that a 2GB hard drive would be all I?d ever need?

Well, in terms of the internet, it probably seems like a long time, but in actual fact, I purchased my computer in 1997, just 10 years ago.

I thought I had all the bells and whistles, I was pretty proud of my new machine. I logged online and learned how to surf and how to chat and how to do internet marketing.
Flash forward ten years and I am still surfing and still doing internet marketing, but I have encountered a problem, which is beginning to be a major problem for me and many others like me. I HAVE DIAL-UP!

Everyone seems to be going to video and audio streaming, which leaves me sitting like a dork at my computer wondering what is going to happen and when. I get stuttering voices and pictures on hold and I wait 20 minutes for a video to load which then takes about 60 seconds when it finally makes it.

The cards that you can send to your friends have flash cartoons. Try that on dial-up! Again, you wait and wait to see if it is something you want to send to your friend. By the time it loads you could have gone to the store, purchased a real card, attached the postage and mailed it out.
When I first started on the internet, everything was text based and underneath the pictures there was a description, so you could actually surf with the graphics off and turn them on when you wanted to see something. Speed driving for those of us with dial-up. Cruising? the internet highway?.yeah man.

Not anymore. Voices start stuttering as soon as you start loading a page and there is no shut off box. So, you end up having to make a choice?.sit and wait for the page to load to see if it is something you want to really listen to, or close the page. Who knows, perhaps that page had the information you needed to change your life, but it took tooooooo long to load.
I realize that high speed is the way to go, and man I love it when I download at the office or at my boyfriend?s place. 5MB is a BIG file for me to download at home and forget about downloading any of the MP3 files. For anything over the 5MB I send a link to my boyfriend?s email and then when I am at his house I download and put it on my stick.

Remember that 2GB hard drive I had back in 1997? Well now I have a 2GB stick for transferring documents. Wow. Who would have thought it would come to this.
I don't plan to give up yet. I still have hopes that high speed will reach me someday soon....either that or maybe I'll move somewhere that has high speed, but that would mean giving up my 2 acres in the country. Hmmm, a hard choice.

My new computer is loaded up with 300 GB of hard drive, a CD/DVD burner, a floppy drive, a USB port, a good video card, cool blue lights and dual processor. I continue to do internet marketing, am continuously working on my webpages, and I am still waiting for high speed to come to me. However I live in a rural area and the cost of the satellite systems hasn?t come down enough yet for me to choose that route. So until then I will surf the best I can and download at my boyfriend?s place.

Fran Watson has been involved in Internet Marketing for the past 7 years. She has learned a lot about what doesn't work and is now learning about what does work. Check out her latest webpages: http://www.franwatson.ca/dog training and http://www.franwatson.ca/Dating Learn along with her by signing up for her free ezine at powersteps@kioskcities.ws

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