I used a dial up service on my computer for many years. It was inexpensive at$20.00 us dollars a month and was fast enough to suit me with few problems. People were always complaining they could not reach me by phone so I had a second phone line installed for just the computer now the cost was double per month but I still had unlimited service with no restrictions, where I know some have to pay by the time used and that can be very costly.
I started using my computer more and more and wanted to be able to do multi tasking and the dial up was just too slow for that so decided to check into a cable modem. I all ready had cable tv so it was a simple matter of adding it to the computer and for only 10.00 more per month than dial up and an extra phone line I took it.
The company set up a time to come and there was a one time charge to hook it up, and all 4 computers were the price of one connection so put them all on cable modem. It took the man about 10 minutes to set it all up. The speed is great and having 4 networked together has not slowed it down. You do need to have enough hard drive space to add the cable on and it has to be on win 98 or higher to hook into cable.
Things that took an hour to download on dial up now take one minute so you can see the big difference. It all comes in one bill with the tv bill so is still only one check to write a month and I can not imagine ever going back to a dial up.
Should you ever have to reformat they leave you a cd to reinstall the cable yourself.
Once in a while you need to reset your cable modem which is easy. You simply unplug all cables from the box they give you turn your computer off for about 10 minutes and plug everything back in and reboot.
Now and then a bridge will disconnect and you simply go to your set up and bridge it back and you are set to go.
The only time cable has ever been out is in a bad storm when you should not be using the computer anyway.
I would definitely recommend cable over dial up any day.