Hi christie,
We have been in that same situation since when moving to the country 10 years ago. However, this past January I heard of a neighbor a mile away who had gotten hi-speed. Well, we found out the name of the company and had it installed Jan 26th! And it has been wonderful! We have a small antenna (roughly about 15" long and 4" wide) on our roof to receive the signal. A wire from the antenna comes down into the house and connects to my computer, which gives me internet access. And I have a wireless router set up which provides hi-speed to all of the computers in the house.

The company has been expanding in a few different locales due to the numbers of us who need with this service. I don't know how garden web feels about this topic, although it does allow us to have better internet access and thus visit their site more often :) So you can email me for the company name etc if you'd like. I'm so thrilled that I can now view videos online and send large files, etc. This company has been great, and they have excellent customer service - which is rare. (I consulted a couple other companies regarding this service in the past year and their customer service was awful)
Melani mmaysen AT gmail.com

I think it is wonderful that Mel knew exactly what you were wanting, Christie. I loved the title of your post, "help for hicks" It makes me laugh everytime I think of it. Us hicks need all the help we can get, right?
I personally think off topic posts like this are just fine. I consider you all a wise bunch and would like to feel free to ask questions such as Christie's here. How do the rest of you feel? We could probably get a 'conversation' side if we asked. Or since our volume is so low it seems we could put OT in the subject to warn those of you who aren't interested. What do the rest of you think?

That's it Mel! Thanks - I will send you an email. The company you use may not be in my area but I'm still curious.

How reliable is your connection? Do you have to reconnect occasionally?

Unfortunately, even in very active forums, separate conversation areas don't do very well at all, like the separate trading page here. Most people don't even check them.

I guess I am a little off topic but for those of us still using a dial-up connection, it's difficult to use Gardenweb. It takes forever for the pages to come up. Even when there's no photos, I have to click on stop after most of the page comes up just because those little green trees next to "Post a Follow-Up" slow my computer down. If there's a post with more than a few photos, it won't finish at all. I often have to stop and dial in again and sometimes even have to close everything and restart my computer to reconnect. I think Gardenweb would love for everyone to have a high speed connection since many gardeners are in rural areas like me. Can you tell I get frustrated with my computer? lol

Anyway - Didn't mean to get off-topic. There IS a forum for Computer Help but I need to know what's available here so I decided to try this forum first. Thanks.

I would like to be able to go off subject at times and am guilty of doing it. But i feel this is the ozarks forum. the computer question could only be answered by someone from here and it is
related to getting to this site. So yes we should be able to ask or tell something that is ozark friendly wether we do it here or a conversations area.
GO FOR IT!!! Yeah!!! LOL
vickie

Hi,
There is a page on their website that shows the coverage area, but be sure to call them even if you don't see your area. They might be able to help anyway.

Christie, my connection has been very reliable. I live near a hilltop and get service from a tower on the other side of Nixa. My neighbors live in a 'holler' and get service from another tower. You do NOT need to have a line-of-sight from your house to a particular tower to receive the service.

There have been two times where city workers had to turn off the electricity at the tower my signal comes from, while they worked on the tower and I had no service for about 15 minutes to half an hour. Due to this, the wireless company told me they just installed a battery backup at the tower, so this shouldn't be an issue again.
When I have a question, I call them. And if I do get voicemail, they call back within minutes and help me until my problem or question is resolved.

I did sign a one year contract. But after hearing for years that AT&T was getting close, and then being told last year that it would be quite a while after all ...
There may be a way around the contract if it bothers you, though. (I turned down 2 work from home jobs in recent years because I couldn't get hi-speed, so I was ready!)
Also, if you give the name of who referred you, that person gets $2 off their monthly bill. A few of us now have given my neighbors name, so they get a lower rate.

We presently live southeast of Clever 4 miles, near the James River. We also have some property miles out of Rogersville which we hoped to build on, but I dreaded going back to dial-up. I was so happy to find out that they now provide service out there too, so guess we can keep the property :)
hope that helps,
Melani

As long as the powers that be don't stop it, I certainly like to see any question connected with our area posted here. I am like Christie and have dial-up and can't see lots of pictures or some pdf files. If they are too long, I just shut down. It would be wonderful to have high-speed....but don't know if I can justify the extra cost just for my pleasure.......I would certainly be interested in learning more about this company so will email you Melani, if you don't mind.

It seems that the internet gets slower by the week for me.