Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem

The Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem is simply not what I wanted. All in all, I could have just kept my old modem, it does however show you callerID, and tech support does answer your email quickly, but if you are looking for feathers like Call Blocking, forget it. I wished I had known that it did not have that feather before I brought it. It is not what I am looking for, maybe it is for someone else but not me. But now I am stuck with it.

I bought this Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem thinking that a USB device would be much easier to manage. Not so. I have had such a hard time trying to keep the modem from giving random "Unknown Device" errors under Windows 98ME that it is hardly worth the time. It may be due to ME but that should not matter. The modem states it supports ME. I have had it attached to two different systems with two different chipsets and eventually it will fail to be recognized on start up. I exchanged the modem and still have the problem. Funny that none of my other USB devices have this problem. No help or suggestions from Zoom tech support. Lesson learned. PCI is going to be my next buy. And I probably won't buy Zoom strickly out of protest. If it wasn't for the hardware problems I'd probably rate the modem a little higher but there is a lot of baggage with this modem.

This Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem is a cracking wee modem which takes minutes to set up. Connection time is fast and its easy to set up so who cares if it doesn't have flashing lights. Very impressed, something which actually works for a change! I was getting 44Kb straight away which for me is a hugh improvement.

I wanted an external modem with lights, in order to see what's happening.

The picture of this Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem on the box shows what appears to be lights and holes for a speaker. Clerks at Best Buy confirmed that it had lights. BUT IT HAS NONE. The packaging is utterly deceptive.

Since I did not open mine for a couple months, I called Zoom and requested an upgrade to one with lights, and offered to pay a modest price differential. They refused. Never again will I buy a Zoom product.

I purchased this Zoom 3090 V92 USB Modem on the understanding that external modems were far supererior to the cheap internal modems supplied with most computers. 'The lights make it easy to see what is happening', claim the 'experts' in many articles I have read.

The problems I had with this modem were mainly the fact that it was very slow to start to dial up (as opposed to straight away like my old modem) and was very slow to disconnect - it would take around 30 seconds before I was able to reconnect after my ISP's time limit expired! Very frustrating. Again, my old modem would disconnect immediately. I tried a newer driver before emailing their support, who were very fast in replying to me but ultimately could not help.

So I eventually accepted I had wasted £50, and reinstalled my old PCI modem. I realised that this cheap 'POS' actually connects consistently at a higher speed and suffers hardly any drop outs, unlike the USB modem! When you consider just how cheap a PCI card type modem is (around £8), I really can see no point in spending more on a modem.

Oh, and the V92 spec is a waste of time in the UK as no ISP's intend to support it anyway.