While the connection is definitely slower than what I have at home and at work, it wasn't as painful as dial-up, in my opinion. I was able to whip through my e-mail pretty quickly in the morning - although I will concede that I was doing it at around 7am before it got busy. It was nice to watch the sun come up and then get the "quick" work out of the way for the day, so maybe the fact that all 20 computers weren't busy was part of the reason for the speediness of the connection.