Just a quick summary of recent findings re. high speed modems. Top three
contenders seem to be AT&T Paradyne, ZyXEL, and US Robotics. ZyXEL has the
biggest "cult following", and can be had for under $300, but I ignored it
because I need something with Mac software, which will work without any
tweaking.

The AT&T Dataport earns nearly unanimous praises for reliability. They are
backordered at the moment, probably because of the special $299 price in
effect until May. Its fax capabilities are worse than that of the other two
modems. WARNING: AT&T ads say that the modem comes with a Mac kit (cables &
all), and has lifetime warranty. This applies *only* when you order
directly from Paradyne! I called ElekTek (one of the distributors), and
they wanted to charge me $16 for cable, and gave only 1 year warranty...

USR Sportster for the Mac is also highly (but not as highly) recommended;
it's only $250 from ClubMac, and if you are willing to roll your own cable
and don't care about the FAXstf software, you can get the generic model
from PC outlets for $190.

All this assuming that you don't have a rich uncle, and can't afford a
Motorola Codex...  :-(    I ended up ordering the Dataport; we'll see how
it works in two weeks or so.
