A Core Competence Product Evaluation

The Bottom Line

We found the Sportster ISDN 128K to be well-suited for residential use. While this card is not "plug and play", automated resource settings and the user-friendly Manager utility result in an "ISDN modem" which is not the least bit intimidating. The analog port is nice, but if you plan to use a fax, you’ll need to purchase the pricey add-on external ring generator. The Sportster ISDN 128K supports multilink and several flavors of data compression (Stac, Microsoft, and Ascend automatically negotiated during call setup for maximum interoperability).

At a street price of $229.95 (a substantial drop from last year’s $399), this card is a cost-effective alternative, especially when compared to similar prices for 56K Sportster X2 modems that yield only a fraction of ISDN’s performance (53-56 vs. 128-512 Kbps, according to USR’s own numbers). Of course, there are other factors to be considered – such as metered usage costs, typical for ISDN but not (yet) for local analog calls. But, that’s another debate…. For now, we’ll conclude by saying that the Sportster ISDN 128K was our favorite of the units we tested under Windows 3.11.

-- Reviewed by Lisa Phifer, May 8, 1997



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