In this article I’ll explain some of the differences between various choices for ways to connect to the Internet.

First off, allow me to explain the two general way to connect to the Internet before getting more in-depth about some of the more specific ways inside these two general categories.

When looked at as simply as possible there are two frequently used computer terms that are about ways to connect to the Internet: dialup and “broadband”.

Dialup is, as you may know, the older way to connect to the Internet, where you use a dialup modem. Dialup modems have been around for much longer than most people realize: I bought my first one in the mid 1980s and they were first invented decades before that.

It was a “1200 bps” (bps is a way to measure of how fast it works) modem that I bought for about  $200 for back then. Dialup modems hit a maximum speed of 56K bps back in the late 1990s, and now sell for under  $10 if you know where to look.

Basically that’s approximately 46 times faster, and 20 times cheaper.

Now you could be thinking “Well that must be pretty fast then!”

If you’re thinking that, you’re wrong.

Dialup is old technology, and hasn’t been improved on in over a decade, which means it’s about 150 years out of date relatively speaking!

The simple way to think of it is, dialup is very slow.

Lots of people are stuck in the dark ages of dialup, either because they don’t understand why to upgrade, or they don’t have the choice where they live.

But what I want to tell you is that even if you are still using dialup and are thinking “Good enough, why bother?– you’re making a mistake.

I’ll get to why in a moment.

First, I’m going to explain the primary alternative to dialup. I’m talking about”broadband”, which basically just means “fast Internet”.

Broadband can be found in a variety of flavors, covering a range of speeds, all of them a lot faster than dialup.

Aside from lots faster, broadband generally doesn’t tie up your phone line, so your friends or family aren’t annoyed by busy signals when they try calling you, and you can make phone calls even when you’re connected to the Internet.

The two most commonplace different types of broadband are cable and DSL. Cable internet comes over the same cable as cable TV, and is available from many companies under a variety of different brands– Roadrunner is one example of cable internet.

DSL actually comes in through your phone lines like dialup, but is much faster and, like cable Internet, you can place phone calls while you’re using the Internet.

You’ve got less-common varieties including satellite, which gives you fairly speedy connections to the Internet over a satellite dish like satellite TV. It is kind of slow for broadband, but quite a bit faster than dialup. It’s mostly used by people away from population centers who don’t have any better choice.

What I tend to tell to most computer users is to get DSL, if they can get it where you live. In most cases it’s really only a bit pricier than dialup is, and in a lot of instances it’s the same price or even cheaper!

It’s not generally as fast as cable Internet, but it is plenty fast for most people, and lets you do a lot of things that just aren’t possible (or are extremely irritatingly slow) on dialup, for example, watching videos on YouTube or other sites, or downloading big files.

Which brings us to one of the most significant reasons I think people should stop using dialup and upgrade to some flavor of broadband — downloading big files.

You might think that you never do that, but the thing is… Perhaps you do (or should be) and don’t realize it.

To start with, computer users are sending around big pictures(or several smaller images), or even videos by email constantly these days.

If you’re on dialup and you tried getting your email and it never seemed to be able to get the new messages, or it took forever to do so, you may have become a victim of this.

So there’s that reason.

But there’s an much more important one: computers need things called “security updates” or “patches” which are incredibly important to get. It’s important for both Windows PCs or Apple’s Macs.

Without these patches, your computer is almost guaranteed to be vulnerable to invasion by viruses, worms, and other threats.

But these security updates ( think Windows Update, or OS X’s Software Update) sometimes can be very large files.

So huge that it can take hours and hours, or even DAYS to download. And if you don’t download them, your computer is vulnerable.

Which leaves you left high and dry if you’re stuck using dialup.

So think about upgrading if you haven’t already, and let people know about this who haven’t. And remember there are a good selection of good sites out there where you can discover Apple basics and Windows basics, so don’t be embarassed to look for more help if you need it.