cheap Broadband

[Andy Hamilton]

I have to change broadband companies on sunday as I simply cannot afford to pay for mine. I have an apple mac so the possibilites are not as wide ranging as for pc users. That aside any recomendations.

Oh and it has to be one that I don't have to pay untill a months time.

[Muddypause]

As good a starting place as any is here http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

I don't know anything about Apple Macs, so this may not be applicable, but Tiscali probably offer the best deal on an uncapped month by month basis at the moment. Having said that, I have had terrible customer support from them, and it really can be difficult getting any sort of response from them when things go wrong. ATM things are ticking over fairly smoothly, but I can't honestly recommend anyone come to them as a new customer, because I fear that setting up a new account may result in serious blood pressure problems. There are other quirks, like a stubborn refusal to add any more newsgroups to their news server, and only a very basic web space facility.

I've often wondered about e7even.com (how are you meant to pronounce that, then?) who seem to offer a lot for little money, providing you can pay 6 months or more in advance.

[catalyst]

hi
haveyou checked out the phone co-op?
they offer broadband now, as well as cheap phone calls...

http://www.catalystcollective.co.uk/phone.html

and if you go hrough this link you help us!!

just had a look though... internet isn´t cheap... (but phone service is!!)

http://www.thephone.coop/internet/produ ... index.html

[Muddypause]

Tiscali probably offer the best deal on an uncapped month by month basis at the moment.

This might be an even better deal, at £10 pm for 512Kbps, but doesn't seem to be available everywhere yet: http://www.ukonline.net/broadband/

I used UKOnLine as a dial up ISP for a long time, and had absolutely no problems with them.

[Andy Hamilton]

cheers people still not sure who I am going to go for. Probally be a bit quiet for a couple of days whilst I sort out the migration. cut off at midnight tonight there seems to be a lot more choice than there was 18 months ago, is the while of the UK on broadband now

[alcina]

Just to add....if you use a router connected to your modem rather than connecting your mac straight to your modem, the mac "problem" (as the ISPs see it) disappears. You just network your mac normally to the router. No "is there a mac driver for this modem?" problems. No mac support required.

There are other advantages (this applies to Windows machines too):

1) A usb modem uses the computer's processor to help it along. Your performace is degraded by plugging it straight into your computer.

2) You can have as many machines as you like all connecting through your router. This gets around, say, the NTL problem where you have to register the MAC address of each device connecting to the box, and you're limited to two addresses. You just register the MAC address of the router and that's it.

3) You can have wireless internet access if you either use a router that has a built-in wireless basestation, or you attach a separate basestation to your network.

4) Only one firewall is required on the router, it covers every computer on your network.

5) As all your machines are networked together, you can have a networked printer that you can print to from any of your machines. And file sharing between your machines is easy.

Wireless/modem/firewall/router/switch all-in-one costs around £100 (eg. D-Link - personal experience of this very easy to set up)

Or you can do it for free if you have an old, unused PC (say a Pentium 75): I use a linux router based around IPCop (www.ipcop.org) - you don't need to be a computer geek to install/use IPCop, it's really easy. I've attached a rescued/repaired Apple Airport Basestation (puffy capacitor problem - capacitors replaced..works like new!) to the network so that the laptops can connect wirelessly. Total cost in money £5 for the replacement capacitors, £25 for a little switch. I appreciate though, that this kind of thing isn't everyone's bag! If so I do recommend the all-in-one things as mentioned above.

Alcina

[nickd]

[quote="alcina"]Just to add....if you use a router connected to your modem rather than connecting your mac straight to your modem, the mac "problem" (as the ISPs see it) disappears. You just network your mac normally to the router. No "is there a mac driver for this modem?" problems. No mac support required.
[/quote]

Do note that ISPs just don't want to tie up support people trying to help out customers using the less popular operating systems, their services should be available to anyone with a computer using TCP/IP ( networking protocol, how your computer talks to everything else ). If you do get a problem and the support person says "sorry, we don't support Apple Macs" just ask to speak to a supervisor, or hang up and ring back until you do get a geek willing to give you some help.