Why do you say the frustrations of dial-up?
I don't know how it is in other parts of the country but here in Wisconsin all of the ISP's have no busy signals (had dotnet for about 4 years now and got a busy signal once and that was because the phone company was working on the lines)...
I connect at 49.2 minimum (normally 52.6 or thereabouts)...
I get wicked download speeds [for 56k] (7k with 6k being norm and I have gotten 10-12k for megabytes and megabytes before)...
I very rarely get disconnected.
And if you pay a year in advance, which we do, it's about 12.95 month. Plus 4.95 for a second phoneline. that's less than $20/month. I refuse to pay $55/month for Charter cable that is down and up as often as the sun and rips you off on pricing too.
I may not have the fastest connection on earth, but I can:
1) Play Tribes 2 with low pings (100-200 max of 300)
2) Download files at reasonable speeds
3) Host eggdrops (not always good for that though)
4) etc.
So I so no reason for me to give up reliability, cost-effectiveness, free SPAM filtering (which my ISP offers, and works great) and a second phoneline for speed.
Cody