USR5610A/B or customer service warnings?

[jss58]

Hello. I asked for advice in buying a decent internal or external modem and all spoke glowingly of US Robotics modems yet I've come-across some red flags regarding the USR5610A/B models.

For instance, one site stated: "19-Apr-01 - USR 5610 Performance Pro Shrieks! - A number of owners are reporting intermittent problems with this modem unable to connect: the modem starts making a screaching noise as soon as it goes off-hook. A number of users have contacted USR support which sends back canned, robotic, inaccurate responses that are totally unrelated to the original inquiry." So, the modem had bugs and USR's customer service was poor.

Has anyone else experienced problems with this "internal" model and with USR customer service?

Perhaps buying the 5686D (external) is the way to go to avoid any system conflicts and since it's external, it can be transferred to other systems down the road.

[saphalline]

If you're worried about potential problems with the USR model, Creative Labs has a Modem Blaster 56K that is a hardware, PCI 56Kbps modem. Take a look around and see if that one has any problems that owners have posted.

As to your consideration of an external modem, yes those are usually highly coveted by the multiple OS crowd as being the only modem one should buy. :) They're twice as expensive but more useful when transfering to various computers, and they will work with anything that has a serial port. The only downside would be that I've heard of recent mobos that are ditching the legacy ports (serial, PS/2, etc), so it may only be a matter of a couple years before M$ decides that legacy ports will no longer be supported! :eek: Shouldn't matter that much, tho, if you can just keep your current machine running. :D It's not like a P4 at 2.53GHz is really required to surf the net at 56Kbps, despite what Intel would have us believe.

If you're actually thinking about all the benefits that an external modem would give you, then I suggest you get one. Internal models aren't as useful or robust, especially when you're playing around with that 486 machine with EISA slots. ;)

[Rick]

I still stand behind my recommendation of a USR modem
If you check the USR site you will find the 5610 is a Softmodem
That puts it even lower than a or equal to a Winmodem

Softmodem = Software Modem
winmodem = Windows Only Modem

Both == CHEAP

Spend the Few extra dollars and get a true hardware modem
You won’t go wrong