> As for the release of V90...  an article I read last week said that
> an "official standard" for v90 has not been established -- even though
> some vendors have jumped the gun and are selling it.  But since this
> isn't my field of expertise, I could be reading old material....

My understanding is that the standard has been released.  There does,
however, appear to be issues in its implementation.  From a specification
point of view, a standard is a standard, but anyone who's been around for a
few years knows that the implementation doesn't always work out so well.
Thus we find that Rockwell and Lucent chipsets may not like an ISP's USR
hardware, while USR chipset-based modems won't connect correctly to
Livingston hardware.

Does anybody remember the fits that Conner hard drives used to give us?
They allegedly adhered to the IDE spec, but often wouldn't coexist with a
Maxtor or Western Digital...sometimes not even with another Conner!  Same
issue here.

I really think that the lesson here should be to research the ISP that
you'll be calling, find out what hardware they are using and purchase the
corresponding modem.  I'll admit that I'm biased towards USR, but that's
only because every USR modem that I've owned or worked with has been a
stellar performer, from v.32 to HST to v.34 to X2.  Your mileage may differ!

Drew Dunn
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