It would be hard to answer that since of the several reasons you may not be getting 50K currently, the biggest one would be your phone lines, both internal and external, and the number of hubs between your connection and the central office.  While a hardware modem may be capable of faster connections, it can't do better on crummy phone lines.  The only way you'll be able to know is to buy one and test it, or, you could go to www.usr.com/linetest (I think that's the URL) to see if your phone lines are capable of a 56K connection.  I am not sure, but I think www.2wire.com has a test program also.  I know they test broadband connections.  On the whole, getting a consistent 40K dialup connection is pretty good, and I'm not sure I'd drop more bucks on a dialup unless I knew for sure I'd get the 50K.  I'd rather go get cable or DSL.

>Any opinions as to whether a 56K hardware modem would be able to deliver significantly faster connection speeds than the same brand 56K modem in a Win version? I am using a US Robotics 56K Win modem running Win98SE on a 100 MHz mother board with an Intel Pentium 450 MHZ CPU and 384 MB RAM. I typically connect at 40K. Wondering if a new US Robotics hardware modem would increase my connection speed to the 48 - 50K range? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tom
>
>                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
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>                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>
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