I don't know where you live, but in Atlanta(Earthlink's world wide head quarters =]) I get DSL that rivals or beats anything out there(i clock in usually between 800kb-1.7mbps) for 55 dollars a month, and I got a free modem, free filters, and when the filters didn't work, they sent a guy out to give us a free splitter and he installed it too!
so...I definately prefer DSL, and also DSL is more often uncapped, and what they don't tell you(some companies fixed this, some didn't), is with DSL, the speed is for EACH transfer, where as cable it is TOTAL...thus I can hit 800kbps on 4 transfers at a time, where as the max for cable would be 650kbps on each