I saw commercials for U-verse when I was visiting my daughter in L.A., but she told me that it wasn't even available at her house. It looks pretty cool, if you live where it's available.

In our tv-watching and computer using lives, we've had a dish, Comcast and U-Verse. U-Verse is our favorite so far.

We've had U-Verse for about 18 months now. There was no loss of service during the switch - we turned off Comcast the day after U-verse started up. We have had 3 outages of about 1 hr each in that time, far fewer than storm outages with the dish and random stoppages with Comcast.

For the first year after switching, U-Verse was 33% less expensive than Comcast. When the first year was up, surprise, surprise - they wanted to jack up the rates. We were able to lower the increase by threatening to leave them.

We have found in this 18 months that we keep losing a channel here and a channel there. When we started, certain movie channels were free and part of the package...now they are add-ons which we'd have to pay for. But, generally, we have plenty of choices for tv. We've also hooked our laptop up to be wireless and we move all round the house with it...very successfully. Switching to U-Verse WILL require that you have a new email address. Making the switch was a royal pain for me. For that reason alone, it will be a very long time before I agree to switch again.

DH has one additional "psychological like" about U-Verse - 1 bill instead of 3. We get it electronically, pay it on line and we're done for another month.

We're happy customers.

Lesterd, thanks for the feedback. I think I'm going to go for it. The pros definitely outweigh the cons for us.

And switching to a new email address, if I have to do that too, will actually force me to do what I have been procrastinating on for far too long. I started using email many, many years ago when it was in its infancy. Which means that I still use my original (work-issued) address on *everything*. And that is of course a netiquette no-no. I don't have or use a personal account. I know I should, especially because I'm going to be searching for a new job, so this way I'll have to set something up and use it.

Thanks again,
Ann

Hey Ann,
We have U-Verse. This is quite long, tried to relay everything. We just past the 15 month mark. I'm not really all that fired up about it. When they finished laying the fiber optic cables they scoured the 'hoods looking for customers. Offering more (we have U200) at what amounted to a huge savings over what we had. DH bit. Our rates did go up some after 12 months, but in comparison shopping, we are about equal or a little better off in price for all 3 services (TV, PC, phone). We are seriously considering a switch and have no doubt they'll offer an enticement to stay, but I'm not sure we'd take it.

I'm comparing U-Verse to cable, which is what we had for TV/Internet for years. Landline phone was a separate provider.

Pros:
Internet has never had an outage (went out a little too frequently with cable, especially storms).

Phone service has never been down.

TV has had no adverse outages. There have been two that lasted several hours. But that was AT&T upgrades or changes, done in the middle of the night with announcements (on screen) in advance.

Has a lot of cool little perks.
-Call history can be viewed on TV.
-If TV is on and call comes in, TV screen displays caller ID info.
-You can view photos on your TV (have never bothered loading that, tho. )
-Can record multiple programming at the same time. Record via primary DVR only. Any DVR box/tv can playback. (See also Cons for more on this.)
-If watching something 'live' on primary DVR/TV, and you missed something or left the room, just rewind and watch again. If the same channel is left on without disruption, it stores about 2 hours prior program memory. (Switch channels and memory is lost.) Say you're snuggled in with a great movie and something pulls you away. No need to press Record (which is a handy single red button). Just leave it on that channel, come back to TV later, press rewind, pick up where you left off (and then fast forward through commercials. ;)
-Can check/play phone messages from any computer, change Voicemail Greeting, control VM inboxes, etc. (See Cons also)
-We have no premium movie channels. But have gotten 3 months of HBO free during winter. And a couple weeks of others free here and there.
-I'm trying to think of more Pros. Will have to get back to you on that.

Cons:
-We've had two DVR boxes (the Primary one) go bad within first year. Programs hesitating, freezing, and finally locking up altogether. Called C.S. Instructed us to reset by holding power button on DVR for 7 seconds and waiting about 5 minutes for it to reboot. That fixed it. Till the next time. (Which at its worst could be a couple minutes later.) There were nights DH was watching big playoff games and rebooted that box over a dozen times in a couple hours. Each time I called, they ran through the 'have you reset' script, then had me troubleshoot on our end by unplugging gateway box and powering up, then going online to a site where our DVR history/errors are logged, and read info to them. Apparently that info showed them how many resets we were doing in a single evening so they sent a tech out. Quickly, about two days later. He replaced DVR box. That was month 3. Tech said hookup job by first guy was not so good. Not buying it. Most common complaint talking with other subscribers in our area is failure + replacement of multiple DVR boxes. Now at 11 month mark for the new (replacement) Primary DVR box, it needs to be replaced. Same symptoms again.

-Secondary DVR box on living room TV stopped playing back anything recorded. That happened about 4th month. Recorded programs would hesitate then completely freeze up within first 3 minutes. Don't use that TV much, but it was becoming yet another irritation. On a hunch last weekend DH replaced splitter AT&T had installed where cables come into house. Voila, problem solved.

-If you must use a Fax machine in your home it will not receive faxes with Uverse Voicemail feature. I searched, I called, no viable solution. There are complaints online. AT&T C.S. said it's something they don't offer at this time. I have a SOHO and need my fax. So I had to turn off voicemail altogether shortly after we signed up. :/ Had to revert back to answering machine in order to be able to receive faxes.

-Internet connection: I'm getting sporadic but noticeable slow down in connection just in the past couple months. It's not my PC, I religiously keep it clean of anything (e.g. spyware) that would bog it down. During those slow spurts when I click on links I get "site not responding" errors. (I hesitate to place full blame for that on AT&T, too many variables. Network connection status reflects a healthy speed. Could be my browser having fits.)

-We have multiple AT&T email accounts between us (work, personal, and 'junk' one for web use). I don't want to log into and out of each one so consolidate, use software like Outlook Express, and now Windows Live Mail Desktop. This happened in both software programs: for unknown reasons, not all our AT&T emails come in. But if I go to AT&T site, they are there. Of the six accounts, it seems my personal and business are the ones impacted. (Only occurs with AT&T emails pushed to OE or WLM, it does not happen with gmail or hotmail, I set up accounts and tested it.) Receipt of some emails are delayed, sometimes by as much as a day.

There are other annoyances (minor) so I didn't go into them.

I know how I feel - despite outages cable for TV/Internet was more reliable overall. Just asked DH if he had to do it over again, would he get Uverse. He said "no way, I want to ditch it". Maybe it's our hookup. He was just talking to a co-worker who lives in a different state, the guy is thrilled, said it works like a dream. But there's a difference in hookup. Coworker's Uverse hookup is all done with phone line wiring inside his house. Our wiring to PC & TVs is all co-axial cable. (Original lines to phones were left intact, as they were.) So maybe they've changed install methods. (I'd definitely ask about that.)

That's about it, tried to relay it all, good and bad.
Feel free to ask if you have more questions!

For email, go to gmail and make an account. You can import your address book from most programs. With gmail, you never have to worry about switching anything when you leave a provider. I haven't used my comcast addy in years.

My son is a direcTV tech. If your yard was as bad as what you describe, I'm surprised the tech installed it. My son pretty much knows his area & which way the satellites are, so he knows who would have issues. Some customers don't care & only want it for the winter football package. Where do you have your current dish? Is it mounted on the roof or on a pole?

The AT&T package sounds like it's similar to Verizon Fios - if you have a home alarm, you need to check if that can dial out. My neighbor has Brinks & says it's not a problem; but I don't know if he's ever called to ask his company to check to make sure there is a working phone line.

Fios in my area has had issues & the lines are brand new. Apparently, all it takes is the wrong kind of weather (not sure if it's wet or cold) but the line can crack or something.

We just got U-verse. We like the whole-house DVR part the best. It does occasionally freeze up, but it's not really a major problem (yet!). We have had no noticeable difference in the computer/internet and have not experienced outages. It has messed with our alarm, so that is in the process of being fixed. Also, I'm having problems trying to use my fax (just discovered this glitch Monday.).

I know this is truly petty, but I'd rather have a NORMAL land-line for my home. I had recently decided to order an "old" desktop (rotary) phone just for the "cool" factor, but found out it probably won't work with this system. Bummer. (I wanted it for our den.) Oh, well.

You know, if it were up to me, I'd just have a phone and internet and ditch the TV. It's a giant time waster for me. But my family would just go apoplectic at the mere suggestion of such.