Customer Reviews

Best Data 56K V.92 External Fax Modem (56SX92)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Seems to be your basic decent modem. No on-off switch, no external volume control, and no second jack for another phone. Other than that though, it's utterly fine (I can get great connect speeds).

want to determine what the maximum possible throughput is for your twisted pair? do the following:

1. go outside to the telco's customer access box (which is on most
houses these days, even ancient ones). open up the box, and plug
your laptop into the line you use for modem access (same type of
plug as always for connecting). before you can plug in, you'll
need to remove the existing plug, which is what connects your
house's wiring to the telco's wiring.

2. dial-up your isp and see what speed you can get. this is the max
speed without your house's wiring. in case it isn't obvious: your
house's wiring can seriously screw things up. i can get 52k
directly, and close to that using my house's wiring.

3. now put the customer access box back the way the phone guys had it,
and go back inside. once inside, disconnect all other phones from
the wiring & dial-up again. this max speed should be real close,
if not exactly similar, to what you saw outside. if it isn't,
you've got potentially a variety of problems in your house's
wiring, including but not limited to:

a. corroded connections somewhere
b. capacitance/inductance bleed-through, so to speak, on one of
your jacks (i actually had this - a crappy, unused, jack was
screwing things up)
c. etc.

4. once you've fixed all the above (which isn't fun), put all your
phones back on the line & try connecting again. if you don't get
the same speed as always (or pretty darn close), see a thru c above
(this time it's in one of your phones). note that phones do place
a load on the line, so don't necessarily expect exactly the same
speed as before. ...there is a real reason for buying a 2nd phone
line just for modem access...

some people just accept their connect speed as "god's will," or "the telco's fault". either of those might really be the case, but until you check you'll never know. and don't expect the telco to do all of the above for you, even if you have inside wire maintenance (they actually used to in the old days, for data-grade lines, which cost more, but these days...).

The only reason I'm giving this modem 4 stars instead of 5 is that I had to jump through hoops to get the right drivers installed on Windows XP.

At first I thought it was my Vonage line that was causing my modem to not detect a proper dialtone.. but as it turns out, the drivers that windows XP try to use with this modem do not work!

I'm not sure if this review page will let me put links to other sites, so let me tell you that I googled "Best Data Modem Drivers" and found a conexant support page which lists detailed steps to determine the chipset of your modem. I found out that this modem is an HSF modem (not sure if all versions of it are so I suggest you follow the links at the end of this page to find your correct chipset).

That page also let's you download the correct drivers for the modem. I updated the drivers with the specific drivers I downloaded. Go to device manager, go to the modem, click update drivers, then select I will find them myself and have disk. Point it to the directory of the unzipped drivers you just downloaded. Install, restart, and BAM! modem works. It actually worked before I even logged in as my MS fax console started dialing as soon as computer completed boot up.

Granted, better tech support would make this a better modem. But, as it turns out, with a little self-help, you can still buy the value product and have it work great!

[...]

The Best Data modem is one of the worst supported modems I have encountered in the 20+ years I have been using them. Outdated drivers are sure to give you a BSOD on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Tech Support is a joke, and I have yet to find anyone else with any idea how to make this modem work well. Buy at your own risk.

If you like the color blue and the sound of your machine restarting over and over again, buy this modem. As previously reviewed- it DOES NOT work with Windows XP Pro. The latest drivers don't help. The enclosed disc is so poorly laid out it is reminiscent of a pig-sty. I expected this sort of pain with the old windows 95 days, but not with something that claims to be XP compliant. DON'T BUY THIS MODEM IF YOU RUN XP PRO!!

I'm only writing this review to point out that the Windows 2000 driver works just fine and dandy.I'm using it with XP to write this because I'm without broadband for a few weeks.

If the guy doing the griping about XP had actually done any serious searching he couldn't have helped but find that out himself.It would have been impossible not to find that info with any effort at all.

Waaaa!!!!!!!!!!!

I own this modem (soon to be "owned"). It works OK under
Windows/98, but when I moved to Windows/XP pro, the drivers,
depending on how they were loaded, would either result in
a BSOD or an unrecoverable install error.

The email technical support was worthless. They did try
to get me to pay a fee, with the guarantee that they would
work with me until the problem was solved. I'm not willing
to throw good money after bad.

I "solved" the problem by loading the generic 56K V.90 drivers
that came with Windows/XP. This works OK, but I don't get the
V.92 features I paid for.

Before resorting to generic drivers, I tried changing the BIOS
settings: AUTO, COM1, COM2, COM4. None helped. Next, I tried
reloading the OS, and installing the modem first, before loading
other drivers. Nope. I even tried a second computer (which
uses an Athlon chip instead of a P4). Same problem; BSOD. And
these were the latest drivers, from their website.

I'm convinced, rightly or wrongly, that their driver has a bug.
Maybe I should go back to Windows/98.

This modem worked perfectly just taking it out of the box and performing the setup. We use it just for business fax send and receive. It is attached to a Suse linux OS using Hylafax software and autoforwards the received faxes to email

Good product, price and timely delivery

Had an internet connection in minutes. Anyone who has given up on winmodems and USB modems using Knoppix (Live CD) should try this modem. I didn't install it for Windows XP home so I can't comment on that issue.

I bought this modem based off the "G. Ciaramitaro" review above. I'm a smart guy and can find drivers for it somewhere I thought. Wrong. All the locations listed above have moved on to other (more recent) model drivers.

Over the last 2 days I have yet to find a driver that works. Thinking it may be the modem, I tried it on a buddy's Win98 box. Worked great there with the supplied driver.

Best data tech support was useless.

If you're using XP or MCE, don't waste your time with this modem. The frustration is not worth saving a couple bucks.

I bought Two, One for my computer and one for my daughters. I run Windows XP pro and as others have stated it will not work! I also do not feel that to get support with a product I am trying to install should come at a cost to me! Ridiculous. I will be returning both modems.