> but that was a well known (and very frustrating) problem, which was a stated position of the companies in question. And I'm pretty sure it became well known

> but that was a well known (and very frustrating) problem, which was a stated position of the companies in question. And I'm pretty sure it became well known due to discussions just like this, over time. There was a ton of confusion about it at the time; I'm really not in the mood to attempt to search for 20 year old nerd-grousing, but I remember it from various Linux lists at the time. And it wouldn't surprise me a bit if some CSR at Best Buy gave bad information about Winmodems, and people like me took the bad information at face value and then got in a discussion about it in some forum... And the cycle of life is complete.