Ocean Shores--good, bad and the ugly

[MechAndy]

My wife works from home and can’t afford to be without a good internet connection.
Without a good internet connection we couldn’t be here.
When we first bought this place as a second home we barely had cell coverage.
There were actually blind spots in parts of our house for cell reception and even with a dish our internet connection sucked to the point of not being able to work from home.

Our place for the most part is dense with trees and we are happy with our StarLink connection.
If it is available for you I’d jump on that.
Our area is prone to power outages and the StarLink connection can easily be maintained off grid if required.

[leastprime]

Originally Posted by pnwguy2

In recent years Oregon has set up an elaborate tsunami evacuation route system. I don’t recall this along the WA coast but maybe someone can correct me.

Oregon's Coast has had Tsunami Inundation & Evacuation and maps for 20 some years.

Up until the late 70's, Oregon's coastal homes stayed up high and off the beach. Since then the low areas and beach frontage that used to be just summer cottages and fishing shacks have been redeveloped or bare property developed into really nice homes. Oregon's Coastal mountain range comes to the shoreline except for a few River valleys and even then the mountains rises quickly.

I remember once when the fire station siren went off (supposedly), and I didn't hear it, even though our home was direct line of sight and 1/4 mile away -- fog was too thick in the low land.

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by MechAndy

Our place for the most part is dense with trees and we are happy with our StarLink connection.
If it is available for you I’d jump on that.

Maybe not generally an alternative to cable internet (from Xfinity/Comcast, etc.), in that Starlink's cost looks to be higher (at least until the cable internet "promo" runs out).

Ocean Shore's Coast Communications might be an exception, however, in that its "limited" Streamer package (250/15Mbps) costing $99.95 has a paltry 375GB data cap, with their Streamer Unlimited (same speed, but no data cap), Gamer (500/30Mbps and a 500GB data cap), and 1 Gig Unlimited (1000/50Mbps and no data cap) costing $124.90, $127.95, and $154.90, respectively (and no promos), with Starlink Standard costing $120.00 (for unlimited data), but with an upfront hardware cost of $599.

https://coastcommunications.com/products (they don't state their data overage charges)

[MechAndy]

Yeah, that sounds about right.
Where we are at (somewhat remote) our only option is a dish.
The Starlink satellite dish system is hands down better than the systems that we had before.
I think those were Comcast and Century.

Our son just spent several weeks here and he does the gaming thing .
With him gaming, the wife in zoom meetings and me streaming movies while playing on the internet our system works just fine.
If we weren’t in a heavy tree’d area it would even be faster.

This is a game changer for us, several of our close friends and co-workers.
Our place is pretty cool and we really like it.
It doesn’t even have a traffic report .
If we didn’t have this high speed internet connection we would still be living near Silicon Valley.
For us this would still be cheap at twice the price for the QOL we receive.

[CrazyDonkey]

I get by fine, just by myself, with about 115 Mbps. Movies, shows, even 4k. Get sports and news with Sling and an antenna. There's almost always something good to watch.

[Diana Holbrook]

We just finally switched over to Starlink. So far, really happy with it. I think we get about 100 Mbps, according to hubby.



We switched FROM DSL, which was a fraction of that. We can't get cable. Previously had tried other satellite services, but the FAPs and data limits killed us.

[MechAndy]

The other day my neighbor showed me a cool little hack with Starlink.
If you currently are receiving less than usual quality pull up the StarLink app on your phone and re-boot your dish positioning.
He showed me by doing his and his dish definitely did not return to the same point of view.

My neighbor and I have a lot of trees in our area so this hack may or may not benefit everyone.

[pavchek24]

Originally Posted by Diana Holbrook

Hope you have fun this weekend! Do update us on what you learn. It seems like at least today, you may have pretty good weather!

Quick feedback on visit to the coast ( Seabrook - Ocean Shore area) last weekend.
I liked it more than I thought I would. It just felt right somehow. I would totally live there.
Roads were not bad at all. People were friendly and more genuine. Generally, the area had more amenities than I expected, and the beach was much more attractive than often described by others (especially north of Copalis beach ).. My stay was too short to have a solid opinion, but I tend to 'feel' areas I visit, and WA coast is now on my radar..

Thank you for the tips related to Internet providers. Starlink sounds like a great and most reliable option.

Good weekend to All..