My view of these things is, no doubt, tainted, but when I got a used machine with an HCF modem already in it and set it up for a friend, I bought the Linuxant driver as the best way to get the thing going quickly. Upgrading kernels since hasn't presented any problem--the licence is perpetual, it seems, including upgraded drivers. Also, I had some problem, the nature of which I can't now recall, and asked Linuxant for assistance. I got it immediately by email and the problem turned out not to be a driver problem. (Maybe it was a wvdial problem.) However, the tech person, Jonathan, helped me sort it out over a couple more emails, even though I acknowledged to him that I knew he had no obligation to do so. Leslie