internal modems

After excellent, albeit not spectacular, connections with an old ZOOM external serial port V.90 modem, I thought it time to not only upgrade to the V.92 communication protocol but also get rid of the cables and power brick that are part of any external modem, as well as the outdated standard serial port. Note that the old ZOOM modem (with a new XP driver) worked flawlessly on a new DELL 2.6 GHz Pentium with 512 MB of RAM, running Win-XP Pro. I picked the USR 5610 for two reasons: a) it's the one sold in the DELL store for the GX270 model, and b) it is one of the very few PCI modems with an onboard flash-upgradable EPROM (as well as a DSP digital signal processor) -- of course you pay for those extras, as compared with a commodity "Win Modem" that uses the computer's processor. Physical installation was easy enough, as was the software driver (dated 8/01) installation from the enclosed CD. OK, ready to test [after verifying proper hardware installation with XP Device Manager's 'Modem Diagnostics']. Now it gets hairier: if and when the modem connected with my ISP, the "handshaking" just went sour - the modem simply was incapable of recognizing any of the faster protocols and ended up (if it connected at all) at from 14 to 28 kbps speeds -- whereas the previous external modem on the identical phone line delivered from 42 to 46 kbps. Worse, the modem rarely connected at the first try and - even worse - just dropped the connection after a few minutes for no apparent reason. [I'm writing this from my other DELL with a ZOOM internal modem at 49.2 kbps speed]. The USR website shows that a newer "Flash' was available (but no new drivers), which I installed then reverified. Same problems. Neither the USR database nor the techs were of any help, reading from a script that starts with "are you plugged in" to checking the LAN installation. Frankly, I knew more about modem operation than the various techs. Wonder how this company still survives -- maybe it's in chapter 11? Who knows. Basically, this piece of junk was designed for WIN95-98-ME a few years ago; with XP support sort of an afterthought. The XP driver provided on the CD is over 2 years old. Worst of all, I've wasted nearly a full day before pulling the modem card and reinstalling the external modem - warts and all.
ADDENDUM: Replaced the old external serial modem with ZOOM's V.92 internal PCI card and updated the driver online; it worked like a charm from the start - at half the cost of the USR modem. [Trying to puzzle out why the USR modem faired so poorly, it might be that the on-board controller is tuned so tight as to misinterpret my ISP's handshaking protocol? Who knows, it just didn't work for me and, as evident from the reviews, for others.

This is a quality controller based V.92 internal PCI modem from USR that will run under both the Windows and Linux OS's. If you are not familiar with controller based modems, it simply means that the modem has circuitry onboard that processes the data - instead of sending it to the CPU - so the system will not get bogged down in processing.

I have had a great experience with this modem, and have not seen or experienced the connection loss or problems that the previous reviewer posted. As for the company, U.S. Robotics is well known and trusted and provides current drivers and updates on its website.

Conclusion: Although this modem does run more than controllerless / winmodems, it will definitely improve you dial-up experience and is worth the money in my humble opinion.

This modem is very unreliable. It can't hold a connection for more than an hour before randomly cutting out. My wife's 56K modem (Apple) never misses a beat on same phone line. USR warranty is now only two years. On top of that, customer support by phone is only free for 90 days. After that you pay... for the privilege. You can probably buy a better modem for [the money]. By the way, that's what I'm gonna do.