Know a good dial-up?

Hi!
I live in a place with nothing faster than dial-up services available (pitty me... ) and I'm looking to buy a modem for my new computer (win XP). What's the fastest/best dial-up modem to go for? Any reccomendations?

I get the feeling that I want a non winmodem as these are faster. Is this right and how can I tell which ones aren't win modems and which ones are?

thanks!

.... cheers! -so I'm looking at the more expensive ones.

Can you reccommend any good makes? -I was thinking possibly US Robotics or 3com.

now im confused, i thought 3com bought us robotics and made all the usr modems, 3com modems. but it seems usr is alive and kicking?

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thanks, I'll check them out.

When you say hardware modem, its not exactly clear...
Do ya mean external modem? (outside the box?)
Or internal(pci) modem? - which do come in two flavors (softwaremodem/winmodem of hardware/non-winmodem?

If ya mean external modem - go serial - and USR external is a good conserative choice - especially if ya ever even think about Linux. I have a USR Sportster 56K external and it is quite accepatable and versitle! Just $$$...

But if your a Windows user only, an internal PCI will do the job!
Modemblasters ain't bad... if fact $20 modembalsters get a little better real thruput than my USR external(same computer,same line!) ... but not that much like 48-50k modemblaster to 46-49 USR... Internals are most convienient for Window users, good bang for the buck!

When someone refers to a 'hardware modem', they are referring to the fact that it contains actual Si UARTs and what not. Software (winmodems) do all this stuff in software and thus require more of the host PC's time.

In general, all external modems are hardware modems. There are ISA bus hardware modems that work just as well as the PCI bus equivalents. I have had excellent results using the modemblasters as well as the sportsters.