I recently added cable Net to my Comcast account. The $149.00 service charge for Home Networking was not an option for me. (I had been an Earthlink user of DSL from when it was Mindspring and wanted to change lines but the service for my area is the Philippines and no one bothered to advise me that the NEW HomeNetworking requires devices that do not work with Macs.)

I did try the router (a Linksys) that I was using before and could not receive service on both an older 8600 with a Sonnet G4-800 upgrade and a Ti Book. The South Florida service people admitted they know virtually nothing about Macs...I was on my own.

I had a line problem, which is free service, and the Tech advised me to just switch Ethernet cables. I was in Radio Shack to pick up a remote A-B switch for the cable and stopped to look at the various routers, hubs, etc. The manager is pretty hip and asked what I was trying to achieve. Told him. Handed me a Linksys Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port Switch, model BEFSR41. I commented that Linksys does not support Macs and he replied that if I ever had set up DSL, I would know what to do - just follow my intuition.

Connected to the modem. Took me about 15 minutes to set up the 8600, running 9.1, and the Ti running 9.2.2 and 10.3.7 (sorry....8 will wait.). Only problem I have experienced is with the 8600 if I have a freeze and have to reboot. I have to open AppleTalk and set to Remote, save, open again and set to Ethernet and save. The synch lights are flashing, but the Mac won't connect if I don't go through the procedure. No problem with the Ti book.

I have carefully read my agreement and I cannot find where service is limited to one machine. I will go back and read one more time. May have overlooked it.

Comcast purchased AT&T, which had taken over from TCI, who took over from Storer. They have 4 different services in our county. Our service is restricted as to speed. Lousy cables, hurry-up patches so they could sell their digital service. Tech from another location told me that. I have been able to improve speed a bit by installing IPNetTuner and resetting the 32k OpenTransport limit to 63k.

Our lines should be "clean" by 2007. One of their services, purchased from Adelphia, delivers close to advertised 4Mbps. We get about 2.5Mbps.