New BroadBand on!

[ninebob]

Another update, guys!

New modem (natty little thing it is too) arrived from wanadoo this morning along with an email to say my line is now BB enabled. Just installed it and WOW!

I had NTL's 1.5meg cable BB before, but this just blows it away and it's only meant to be 1Mbps....

I'll leave a little time for teething probs before I rave too much, but so far so good, and comparing the £17.99 I'm paying now to the £34.99 to NTL before, ninebob's a happy little bunny today!

Now, just need to cancel that AOL free trial and try to get rid of the software....

 

[pipme]

• £17.99/month for 1Mb broadband (2GB/month limit)

Is that limit a tad low ? ..... I am not a prolific 'downloader' but am using around 9.5 GB of my 15GB BTYahoo limit per month.

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

• £17.99/month for 1Mb broadband (2GB/month limit)

Is that limit a tad low ? ..... I am not a prolific 'downloader' but am using around 9.5 GB of my 15GB BTYahoo limit per month.

Joined: 24 Feb 2004
Posts: 2187
Location: Unknown or unspecified country

No wonder is it really...!

 

[pipme]

U toW ? --- U Tow?-- U tow? - U Tow? - U tow ?

 

[AdamW]

Eurgh, french internet, why not just get a minitel terminal and be done with it! Ninebob, or "neuf-franc" as you shall forever be known!

Not sure how much I download in a month on average, but I did once download 8GB in one week. I've considered getting 1, 2, even 4mb adsl but then I realised that I (currently) don't really need the speed. I have promised myself that if I get in a flatmate I will upgrade though

By the way, I am now fully functional again. Exploded PSU replaced with my "hyperthermic superconducting noiseless silent psu", crashed hard-drive replaced. Only 3 moving parts in the whole computer now, CPU fan (18dBA super-silent jobby) and 2 hard discs (25dBA each, very quiet). And I have software running that tells me it is all running cool (as in not warm ) It is so quiet that I have to leave the side off the case to make sure the CPU fan is actually spinning! As soon as I get over the weirdness of it I will put the side back on.

Anyone who has a loud computer, I urge you to make it all quiet, it is sooooo nice when the loudest thing on your whole computer is the mouse buttons!

 

[ninebob]

• £17.99/month for 1Mb broadband (2GB/month limit)

Is that limit a tad low ?

You are indeed correct, I will just have to wait and see, if I have to upgrade then so be it, still not bad value I reckon...

 

[pipme]

BTYahoo say they will enforce limits early this year, I guess the whole bunch of 'net highwaymen' will follow ... I know it is business, but leaves a sour taste when under the hype lies a pot of sh it.
They will, apparently, provide a means of monitoring the necessary usage.
When I was on 'dial-up' anytime? (150hrs per Month) I used a brill piece of software 'Internet Connection Viewer' which kept a very accurate account of accumulated time spent with daily logs and analysis ... useful because one could make use of low cost access via another provider on a weekend when the BT 150 hrs was looking shaky ----
BT's accessable usage info was not really current and useless when at the margins of time available. ... I expect their BB usage information to be no better.

 

[AdamW]

I know several people who have moved from BT to other ISPs due to the download cap. Fair enough, few people download more than 15GB in one month but it is the principle. Could you imagine going into an "eat all you want" restaurant and then being told "but you can only go up once".

 

[pipme]

Maybe should be annualised, 10GB usage this month therefore account holds 5GB profit on 15 GB monthly limitation --- could have interest rates too, save a Gig this month earn 100MB on top that extra Gig added to next months quota ..... P'raps not

BTW It is not just downloads is it ? It is the sending and recieving all summed together ie uploads plus downloads.

From BT itself !!

What can I do with 15GB a month? Back to top
You can do ALL of the following:

surf the internet - 15 hours each day
send 250 JPEG pictures by email every week
receive 250 JPEG pictures by email every week
download 250 music tracks every week
download three hours of video clips every week
listen to online radio for 15 hours every week
send 3000 emails every week (without attachments)
receive 3000 emails every week (without attachments)
If you do all of this - which is quite a lot! - you'll be transferring about 15GB of data a month.
So, you can see that 1GB is actually quite a large amount of data, and you can understand why 15GB or 30GB is more than enough for most people.
How will I know how much I've used?
For now, have a look at the list of activities above - it shows all the things you can do within a 15GB monthly usage allowance. Most of you use less than this, so it's unlikely that you'll need to worry.
If you use up your monthly allowance, you can choose to buy a 'usage allowance top-up' or upgrade to a service with a larger allowance - so you can keep control of your bill.

I suspect they are busily working out how to keep us in the dark over usage ... must hunt down a BB usage collator.
P

 

[kendor]

obviously a nice thing to have broadband but until the prices come down and the service is reasonable i shall stick to good old pay as you go or use the works T1 connection

 

[AdamW]

I love the way they list all these things you can do with 15GB, when they make no mention of the bitrate of the online radio or video clips, nor the size of the JPG files, nor the rate at which one surfs the web.

For instance, I know people who gawp at the same page for 10 minutes and then click a link out of there. Me, I have several webpages on the go at once. I am therefore likely to be transferring more data than the single-window user.

I have half a mind to subscribe to BT Yapoo, then smash the 15GB limit by surfing like a maniac for 15 hours a day, sending and receiving 250 JPEGs of 50mb each every week, download 250 music tracks, uncompressed, encoded at 24bits resolution and 192kHz sampling, each 30 minutes long. and so on and so on. It's easy enough, I'll write a piece of software to just sit uploading and downloading from an ftp automatically.

When it comes to the end of the month and I have used 100GB or so, or worse, not been able to accomplish all the above due to needing a faster connection, do you think I would have a case against BT Yahoo?

 

[AdamW]

obviously a nice thing to have broadband but until the prices come down and the service is reasonable i shall stick to good old pay as you go or use the works T1 connection

I never considered dial-up, after 3 years with a 155mbit "OC3" connection at uni, a 56k modem was as poor a substitute as a blow-up doll for someone who has just been dumped by <insert name of your dreamgirl here>

However, I did think about the cost aspect. Now, my adsl costs me £23.44 a month inc vat. Costs a little bit more than Wanadoo, but the service is excellent. And it's not French.

Now, £23.44 works out to £5.40 a week (23.44*12, then divide by 52). How much die-lup useage would I get for £5.40 a week? Using Want-a-poo and their current dialup offering, 9 hours a week if I only used it evenings and weekends. That's really not a lot, 1 hour a day. If I used it purely during the daytime, that would go down to about 2 hours and 20 minutes a week! Broadband worked out cheaper, which was great because I then had a logical justification for getting it!

I have heard that with Wanadoo dial-up the normal modem handshaking tones are substituted for a version that goes "A-haw-de-haw-de-haw!", and Internet Explorer is renamed to "L'Explorer de l'Internet". Advertising pop-ups are added that take you to www.garlic-shop.fr and www.stripey-jerseys-and-berets-r-us.fr.

If you try to visit a left-handed website specialising in folically-challenged young ladies it blocks you saying "Non non non, monsieur, voici un website pour les birds avec beaucoup de spiders' legs."

Also the included anti-virus protection is rather unusual in that instead of fighting the virus, it just surrenders.

 

[pipme]

...You can do ALL of the following...

Big difference between 'CAN do' and 'WILL do'

I had found that 150 hrs pm 'anytime dial up' was just insufficient and far too slow.
512 Kb/s is fine for me at present, a total different world from dial-up - grabs PDF catalogues in secs - £26 odds pm BTY 6 mnths, no outages, no appreciable slow downs, good email facilities ... crikey a pint of beer costs around £2 doesn't it ? and all one is doing is pizzing it away in an attempt to get the final one down !!

There we go Kendor, typical Labour fiddling using works connection, tut, tut ...

Like the Gypsies, man cannot refrain from the odd, idle boast of preeminnence, which exposes their inner self ...... Who can forget the ridiculous boasts of the alfa male gypsies, threats made on tv after Tony the Norfolk farmer was convicted ? .. A bit different from the 'families' trotted out for interview on the illegal sites !!

 

[ninebob]

Not sure why you're so vehemently opposed to wanadoo, Adam? Apart from clearly not being a fan of the french!

However, I shall not rush to defend them just yet - I will bide my time and see how things go. I remember singing the praises of NTL when they first connected me and now I have rather a lot of egg to wipe off my face...

 

[pipme]

Chocolate or Fow(u)l ?