Got Broadband?
I just got a killer broadband connection at home courtesy of my workplace. Seriously, this baby can run. I just downloaded the RedHat 9 ISOs (total 1.5GB) from the KEMS mirror in under an hour. Now those from outside Kuwait seeing this might be thinking that’s freakin’ slow. Well, that is pretty good if you consider the fact that most DSL users in Kuwait call 128 or 256Kbps highspeed dsl!
Doing a quick price check on qualitynet.net shows that for roughly the same amount I would pay for an annual 128Kbps connection here in Kuwait, I used to get 1.5Mbps (yeah that’s 1500Kbps) in the US! That’s an ‘order of magnitude’ difference.
Anyways, getting back to my dsl connection, it averages 512Kbps usually and since it’s free, I’m not complaining =)
What I will bitch about though is the ridiculous price gouging on wireless routers here in Kuwait. I want to setup a wireless network at home so I went around Ibn Khaldoun expecting to find a decent router for 20Kd or so. Boy was I wrong or what. Even bottom of the barell stuff like DLink was retailing for a minimum of 35KD. I know that it shouldn’t cost that much because I bought one in the US about 2 years back and it was like half that price. So did a search on PriceGrabber for that same DLink router and, guess what, the price is literally less than half of that.
I ended up buying a Netgear wireless kit for $75 (I need the USB WiFi key for my desktop because I don’t have any spare slots on my the motherboard for a NIC!)
