DSL-you still have to dial-up but is faster than 56k, and you have to be a certain distance from the phone company, the further the slower the connection.

Cable-on all the time no dial-up needed, i believe a lot faster than DSL. you can get it anywhere the cable company offers it. downside is you share bandwidth with other customers but in my complex alot of people have cable but no noticable slow speeds, its pretty much at a constant speed.

with cable your computer would be exposed to hackers though but i havent had a problem yet, maybe because my router has a firewall but not sure, i'd get a firewall program for both DSL and cable to be safe.