I hear ya, but lets hope it never comes down to that. Let's---just---hope... [gives dramatic glare]
That reminds me of a point I forgot to make earlier- dial-up isn't really all that slow, actually...if you use it for what it was largely intended for when it first became introduced to computer-dom. It's very simple- turn off the pictures, the java, the plugins, all that fancy graphics goodness crap. Do that, and the text will fly into your computer like the bozaks. Who would want to do that? Well, if the majority of websites you go to, are because you intend to read up on something, it's great! You can skip all those friggen ads and largely superfluous pictures and pipeline that text right to your brain tissue. Websites load up in a snap, and it's a whole helluva lot less a load on your computer, altogether (and when you have 10-15 or so tabs open in your web browser, storing all that graphics crap can tie up your resources). Then when you do come across a place holder that you would like to see its picture, just turn your pictures back on, reload the page, and then turn the pictures option back off when you are done. Now none of this will help you if you enjoy downloading, ahem, videos, music, filesharing, and the like all day. Broadband is definitely the right tool for the job there.
Here's one other observation since I got DSL- tranferring large amounts of data is definitely quicker, but the latency is not necessarily better. As far as my setup, latency may actually be slightly worse than when I was on dialup. That is, when I hit a weblink, it seems to take a moment before it actually starts getting that new page. There's a delay that belies that fast DSL transfer characteristic. It's noticeable to me because I hazard to say it may actually have been lower in my dialup to get a new webpage started. My expectation going into DSL is that just everything would be quicker. I'm not complaining, really. Its just something I thought peculiar, once I played around with it a bit.
