Rent cable modem for $2.50 or buy?

It seems silly to me to have to "rent" a modem (both of my prevous DSL providers gave it to me for free) but the cable modems I see at amazon.com are $50 to start... so I'd have to wait 2 years for it to pay off. Anyone have an comments on this?

I'm ditching my SBC/Yahoo! DSL so I can go with TalkAmerica.com's cheap phone service. WideOpenWest internet will be just a tad more, but will be offset by the savings in phone charges...

I would buy, but that's just me. If you rent and there is an equipment change that your modem can't handle, you would get upgraded. If you owned it you would have to buy another.

I think there are some people that bought DOCSIS 1.0 modems and then AT&T switched to DOCSIS 1.1 and they got burned. I think there is a DOCSIS 2.0 standard coming out now too.

I bought. Now I can take mine with me when I move and don't have to rent it there either.

I'd rent. As Rob said, some people got burned by AT&T by buying.

Somehow We made out really well by renting - we got them to replace the original (non-DOCSIS) modem when it started playing up (regular block-sync dropping), and then about 2 months later they rolled out a wide-scale modem upgrade with the same modem as our new one, and instructions to dispose of the 'old' one as we saw fit. This coincided with my in-laws signing up for cable and emailing me for advice on the same subject so they ended up with a free modem.

I rent. Perhaps I just received a crappy modem, but mine went kaput after only a couple months of use. I called my provider and they had a new one out the next day, free of charge. On the other hand, the replacement has worked nicely for a year and a half now...

Thanks guys. Looks like I might rent because we're most likely moving in a year, and who knows what company I'll be using then. I noticed none of you mentioned performance differances, so that is good.

I have a quick question for you experts..

They are coming to install my cable modem in about a week.. Currently, I have no software installed for my DSL connection - all of that is handeled by my router (which they say not to do, but it works). Will I beable to do this with my cable modem too? They asked me what OS I was running and I can only assume they're going to ask to install something on my computer.. sigh.

So long as your cable "modem" (actually a router itself) is not a funky USB device or some such thing, then you can (re)configure your existing gateway/router box to do it all for you with the cable connection too.

Cheers

w00t! That's what I was hoping! Thanks!