I just found out that Ricochet has finally set up their system in 11 areas and that their new modems have USB interfaces and are Mac/Windows compliant. I guess it would have been better if I'd known this a few days ago before I placed my PowerBook order. The only reason I ordered a USB-Serial adapter for $75 was to hook up the old Ricochet to my new PowerBook. The new Ricochet is $99 with a 1 year subscription at $75 a month, compared to $35 a month for the current Ricochet, which I don't know if it will work with the new system. It'll continue working in the Bay Area since we're using an upgraded system, new installations may not have backwards compatibility with the old modems.

The most obvious benefits of getting a new modem are the 128 kb/s transfer speeds and the additional areas of coverage. But, do I really need that speed? What do I use my modem for now? At work I use it to get my email and with ICQ. Occassionally I use it for ftp (if a file transfer is via ftp:// rather than http://) since we can't ftp out of our firewall, but that is really slow for that purpose so I usually wait until I get home. Also occassionally I use it for telnet to thales or some other outside system. Recently I've used it to access a remote lab system for work, handy because then we didn't have to request the IT Dept to let another PC have unrestricted outside access to the Internet (they get annoyed for some reason).

I also use the Ricochet at gaming. It's just nice to be connected but if you think about it it's not really essential since it's the weekend. It's also not as convenient because my PowerBook takes up too much space on Shannon's small table and in Donald's place there is no table space. But it has been used by others to access the Internet while gaming. Since I've been running I don't tend to use it during those times. Another factor is that my new PowerBook will have an Airport card and I'll try to get Shannon to set up an Airport base station at his house. In which case I'll have good Internet access at our primary gaming location.

Occassionally I've used the Ricochet (if I happen to have it on me as I usually leave it at work) to get to the Internet when I'm stuck somewhere in the Bay Area. I've used it at DunDraCon and at some remote locations to get some piece of information from the Internet. But for the most part I use it for low speed access at work. So although 128 kb/s access would be nice (and it would work in a moving car too though it's not recommended if you're driving) I don't see it as necessary since I have other high-speed connections at work and home.

The other reason to get the new Ricochet would be for expanded coverage in the US, assuming the old Ricochet won't work in the new areas. Particularly I would like Sacramento and Iowa City covered. Sacramento because I do go home sometimes and I don't want to monopolize the phone line. Iowa City because it'd be nice to stay connected at Billy's place. Sacramento I can see it eventually being added since it's a top-40 market, although it is a bit spread out. Iowa City I don't see anytime soon (maybe a DSL line and an Airport base station for Billy?) as they don't even have CPDP access.

So really the new Ricochet would not significantly help me at work and would only really come into it's own if the coverage were expanded. Due to the way the system works it's unlikely to ever cover anything but major metropolitan areas. It's too short ranged, unlike mobile phones. When I think about it, I don't really need to spend $900+ a year for better speed. I wouldn't be able to take advantage of it enough to make it worthwhile considering the current system meets my modest needs.