Trust 235A SPEEDLINK ADSL Web Modem Somerville MA

Rating: 8/10

With ISP providers constantly cutting their monthly charges and many now offering free activation, many would say it's never been a better time to join the broadband revolution. Trust’s offering in the ADSL market is the Speedlink ADSL web modem. A small, sleek silver modem. The modem connects to your PC via a USB connection so it doesn't require a network card. It also pulls its power from the PC as well. The box comes with the modem, the USB cable and necessary connector cable (RJ11), but no microfilter, which is a big oversight in my opinion, meaning you need to buy one separately (so this isn't really an 'ready to go out of the box' ADSL modem offering). Installation is wonderfully simple. It does come with a number of ISP providers’ details included on the installation CD, however these all seemed to be European ISPs so were of no use to me. The installation asks you for all your ISP provider’s details and various protocols (VPI / VCI, encapsulation modes etc) all of which should be provided by your ISP.

Once all of this is installed you are ready to go! Enter your username and password on the logon screen and you are off surfing the web.The speed difference from a standard dial-up modem is unbelievable, you really will wonder how you ever managed with a standard dial up connection. However I did find some faults with the modem. As well as the aforementioned lack of any ADSL micro filters, it does seem to be an incredibly power hungry device. My test PC has a lowly 250Watt PSU and I had non-stop problems with the modem. Usually involving my loosing my connection after about 20 minutes, anything plugged into my other USB port on my PC would suffer a similar death very soon also. I'd warn you against using this ADSL modem unless your PC has a 350Watt PSU or better. Otherwise this is a great purchase, installation literally takes ten minutes and youíll never ever go back to dial up.

For more information, visit Micromart.co.uk