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There's been a great upsurge of messages since the holidays ended. We old retired blighters, who pay our own 'phone bills, can't afford to read them all!
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Tomo, consider switching to AOL or One.Tel
HJ
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Somewhere up in the options there is something called "Make available off-line". Its fairly horrible on diskspace, but essentially it will create the selected pages off-line, on your own computer.
It won't help with replying, but it will help with reading. Although to be honest I have never trued it on the backroom, but I used to read the Electronic Telegraph that way, in the old days when it was worth reading at all !
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For anytime access you shouldn't be paying more than £15 a month.
Cheaper than going down the pub!
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I'm finding ADSL to be quite nice. 24/7 and doesnt use up the phone line.
£40 a month is a bit steep though, but it allows me to share the connection around all my computers without any slowing down.
oh, and its 10 times faster than my old modem was.
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Tomo,
You can't truly use/enjoy the internet without unmetered access, you spend too much time clock watching otherwise.
£15 a month and you'll be away. Loads of ISPs doing it.
David
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Freeserve Anytime is just £12.99 per month. 24/7 access. No phone bills.
Works for me.
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I have Fresserve Anytime but sometimes in the evenings its slow to log on and download.
Anybody have a similar experience with Freeserve Anytime?
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> I'm finding ADSL to be quite nice. 24/7 and doesnt use up the phone line.
Out of interest what kind of speeds do you typically get ? And do you know how far from the POP or Terminal Enclosure you are ?
Also, for anyone interested in broadband communications in the UK, I suggest you look at this site...
www.adslguide.org.uk/
I wouldn't take everything they say as gospel, but its a very good place to start.
Mark.
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For once the Third World wins out. Philippine local calls are included in the rental, i.e. "free".
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THis one for Tomo: taxes in the Phils - 10% VAT is all you'll pay if you're a retiree resident who keeps his money offshore. JUst visit the ATM every time you want to go out and boogie. THere is a charge natch but better than paying tax! Reason is if you have no income arising in the Phils you pay no tax. At the same time you can have yourself declared not resident for tax in UK, thus get away there as well.
Philis has a reciprocal agreement with the NHS and Social Security, but I've never tested it. Prefer to pay own med cover (I'm 61) which covers most things and costs me about 400 quid p.a. Medcare is good, if you want proof take a look at the FIlipino nurses in your UK hospitals, many of them I helped put there thru my consultancy.
Tax is theft in my book, simple as that. I've paid too much to too many regimes too many years and got back too little, now it's my turn to give 'em the finger.
YOur motoring, while horrendous as mentioned many times traffic-wise, is OK outside the city and v. cheap. Don't want to clog up the forum with info not of use to many but let's just say gas is a bit more than a UK quid a gallon. Road tax on my big Ford (5.3 liter) comes out at 27 quid p.a. and ins fully comp (there are no NCB's here) costs just under 70 quid.
The only Manila Galleon I know is a girlie bar, if that's what you were thinking of.
Today's threads include some delightful loft-scavenging (old motoring stuff etc) Totally coincidentally we are just moving into our newly built house and have unpacked stuff not seen for yonks, viz: one half can of Saudi Arabian unbranded engine oil 20w/30, 1 owner's manual in Farsi/English for the Iranian Paykan 1978 model (Old UK Hillman HUnter 1725 cc), 2 CHrome Mustang V-8 rocker covers (huh???) with gaskets still stuck on them, one dipstick of indeterminate origin, a grease gun full of solidified grease, one axle stand (one???), a Bahrain registration card for a 1994 Mazda 929, some keys with Ford on them, and, the best of all, a B & W 1959 handsome Growler astride a Triumph Tiger T100C motorbike with a young lass in a pony-tail and bouffant skirt affectionately at hand.
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Hello Growler,
The Manila Galleon I was thinking of was the yearly gold shipment to Acapulco, away back in old Spanish times. I doubt if they had girlie bars in Manila then, though no doubt there was some sort of entertainment for sailors!
Thanks for the info on taxes and things. Fortunately most of us are unlikely to be able to join you and attract too much notice to the situation.
Heather and I have to rely on the NHS, being antique - it and us - and they don't do too badly; except, getting our money indirectly, they tend to forget we are customers and get bossy!
Cheers, Tomo
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Thank you Growler! The trouble is the Internet was invented for the USA, where also there are no timed charges for "local" calls; I have flat rate for Compuserve, just as AOL could be - all one firm nowadays, actually. Not so of course with BT, which led some people locally to try one or two other services - only things turned out not so well for service and at least a proportion went back to BT!
I think I once heard that the Islington brigade wanted us all on the internet;
in which case they should spend a little of the money extorted from us (by menaces, which would arouse all the forces of the state against anyone else trying it!) on free local 'phone charges - to be a bit Irish! (What are taxes like in the Phillipines - a region only familiar to me in respect of the Manila galleon and things may have changed?)
I wish I were young again, and could be very diligent and do what I should have done and got out of it.........
But as my father used to say:-
"If I had knew,
I would have drew,
The Joker,
And went Nap!"
Anyway, thanks for all the kind suggestions, which, God willing, I shall print out (if that succeeds, it will be another small step for man......)
Best wishes, Tomo
Stop press! Printout taking place!
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It was suggested that Freeserve wasn't the best just at the moment and I changed from TFI (thefreeinternet) and went to OneTel. £12.99 a month unlimited. No complaints at all so far (2 months use). Don't what ever you do use TFI. Seriously unhappy with them - slightly cheaper, but very much a case of "you pays your........."
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I use Freeserve Anytime at home, with Virgin as a backup in case Freeserve is down (obviously calls on Virgin are chargeable, but I think I've only had to use it a couple of times).
Freeserve is not particularly quick and the connection occasionally drops out, but that may be my end rather than theirs. still for £12.99 a month you can't complain.
I just wish that the UK would get broadband sorted out. There are around 100,000 users in the UK as opposed to one million in Germany, which has about 10% greater population.
I recon if the price was £25 a month we would get the same sort of take-up as Germany, but at £40 + in the UK it is too expensive for large-scale domestic use.
It seems the telecom companies i.e. BT would rather have £4 million pounds a month revenue rather than £25 million, an attitude which I find difficult to understand.
Business use at work would cost us £100 a month, still far too much for the amount of usage it would get.
The Government keeps bleating on about getting every home/school/business on line, but action and incentives are sadly lacking and we are falling further behind each day.
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Lack of broadband is one of my biggest gripes. We spend many hours on line and would kill for a nice fast connection - as would a number of our clients. Even £100 /month is fine for all of us. I am not justifying the price as I think it should be much lower. But in business terms, if you can't get broadband because your local exchange has not been converted and you can't get cable because there is no local cable franchise, it is a real killer. Some of our clients have even considered moving to satellite but the start up fees for that are around a grand and monthly fees around £150.
Britain is really lagging here. In a recent Computer rag I read that the UK is 23rd in the world for broadband access. Friends from abroad seem to confirm this. A colleague from Sweden visited the other day - there he said that at home he has 512/256K for around £10 /month. At work they have 2Mb for around £100/month.
The French have also just invested around £2 billion into their telco infrastructure to make sure they are not left behind. They have realised that taking so much money out of the telcos for 3G mobile licences has left the telcos a bit cash strapped and unwilling to invest in broadband technology.
This government has just taken some £25 billion out of the telco industry and has also recently confirmed that they are unwilling to invest anything back into ensuring broadband is adopted swiftly. Short sighted or what? Meanwhile business is suffering and being upstaged by our continental friends..
If only they had had much more reasonable annual licence fees for 3g mobile licences instead of the one off mega sum that has proved to be so crippling.
Oh well rant over - I don't expect much to change.
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Tomo, I'm a retired old Blighter too but, have you investigated a cable connection in your area ? After one or two other ISP's over recent years, I went onto NTL. I have no connection with NTL (No pun intended) but, I cannot speak too hightly of their service. The "professsional" PC user might have reservations but, I pay no line charges at all when on the "net", apart from a single 4.5p connection charge. This is through their "NTLworld" online service.
NTL's website would provide you with an easy facility to find out if their cable comes by your front door or, when it might do in the future. Also, the TV digital service is excellent and, with the money I save on "linetime"I pay for an extra telephone line, dedicated to my PC.
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Mark,
I dont know how far I am from the exchange, but typically I get between 30 and 50k(bytes)/sec download speeds, although largely depends where I download from. From sites I know are local, i.e. my university, I regularly hit the 70k/sec maximum.
I also run an ftp off my internet server which runs fine and that will always upload at the 256k(bit)/sec maximum if the remote user/s will allow.
It'll also quite happily run an 8 player unreal tournament server through it! Not quite as fast as lan but still low pings (<100ms) (The servers called barry if any of u play ut).
Cheers
Mark
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