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it sucks, i was at my friends hosue that was using it last night... it gets like 900 ms pings and doesnt download for crap..

Satelite is satelite, pretty much. It is impossible to overcome it's problems. It will always have lag. 

Thats good,it is always nice to hear someone is happy with their satelite. There are times it rocks. (and then there are times it does not.) 

Actually I had some very unusual high speeds for a bit myself. It was running over 3MB. Only lasted a month or two.

So you never know. 

Lag is not a problem with satellite but a fact.Sending a ping twice around the earth would be close to the lag of satellite and the distance involved so the shortest lag is a straight line as always. What happens is this is combined with other factors, poor aiming may be #1 but one must not forget internet traffic that nobody has control over. From one second to the next, different congestion every time, many factors apply to lag and speed variations. 

Aye that is what I was trying to explain. Here is an example of my pings but keep in mind my service plan and dish because alot on the residential plans can add about 100 to 150 ms to my pings usually on Hughes.

Pinging www.yahoo.com [69.147.114.210] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 69.147.114.210: bytes=32 time=706ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.147.114.210: bytes=32 time=726ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.147.114.210: bytes=32 time=706ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.147.114.210: bytes=32 time=706ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 69.147.114.210:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 706ms, Maximum = 726ms, Average = 711ms
Pinging www.pcpitstop.com [64.29.201.21] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.29.201.21: bytes=32 time=687ms TTL=236
Reply from 64.29.201.21: bytes=32 time=704ms TTL=236
Reply from 64.29.201.21: bytes=32 time=674ms TTL=236
Reply from 64.29.201.21: bytes=32 time=714ms TTL=236

Ping statistics for 64.29.201.21:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 674ms, Maximum = 714ms, Average = 694ms
Pinging www.testmy.net [67.18.179.85] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 67.18.179.85: bytes=32 time=769ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.18.179.85: bytes=32 time=677ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.18.179.85: bytes=32 time=708ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.18.179.85: bytes=32 time=698ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 67.18.179.85:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 677ms, Maximum = 769ms, Average = 713ms

Sorry I couldnt for the life of me remember how to set up a long ping string so I just did 3 short ones. That is what I get 24/7 and have since I switched back but I see alot of pings from other peeps on hughes residential plans with the smaller disthat run from 800 to 1000 ms pings with their avrages running usually close to 850 to 900.

Also please note that I am not saying Hughes is better than wildblue any longer. Most Hughes customers no longer see peak time slowdowns either anymore and thus get their package speeds or close usually and the pings are better and they have the new fap free time but at the same rate Wildblue is cheaper, gets very good speeds as well and has a higher fap limit stretched out over the rolling month which makes it a bit easier on some. And both have rotten customer service or used to anyhow if you are using wildblue and not coops. If you using coops you just got an unfair advantage  J/K.