Today i saw a comment about power supply being a cause of poor performance of an external modem. Most people are not aware of the importance of good quality power supply - which has been rapidly deteriorating for the past few years. Most companies cut their manufacturing expenses on the power supplies. However, I dare to say that the power supply is probably the most important part of any system. Poor power supplies can be a cause of all kind of problems, and is usually impossible to trace the cause - the power supply.
Modems are especially sensitive to power supplies.
For the past few years, after I'd buy a new external modem, the first thing to do for me was to toss the cheapo power supply I got with modem, and get replacement one. That is my advice to everyone out there. There is nice example how a company would market lower quality power supply as a bonus - like Iomega, which states that the new ZIP Plus drive comes with a much smaller and lighter power supply unit. What they don't say, is that it is lighter and smaller because it uses switching technology, and not the good old transformer unit which is of course more expensive, and better. Their ATX supplies are said to work in the Power Computing machines as well.