Still receiving cr*p service from freeserve. It's marginally better in early a.m. than during the evening. I've had 3 different views advanced:
(i) the yanks come on line when it's evening our time,
(ii) all the pimply teenagers are playing games, but aren't yet out of their pits in the morning,
(iii) freeserve are grossly oversubscribed and at peak times the first thing they do is knock out those who (like me) only pay for calls, not £12.99pm.
The b*gg*r of it is that I also use beeb but have found it impossible to uninstall freeserve totally.
Any thoughts?
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Same here, Colin. We use virgin, and since they went 'fixed tariff we are having more difficulty getting a connection, sometimes being thrown off on a random basis.
I was listening to someone in the pub the other night - it went: 'Yeah mate, I can't wait 'till we get broadband, then we can leave it on all day.....'
Aaarrrgh!
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My access to sites has gone very slow in the past 48 hours - both from the office and from home.
This is into US, UK and domestic sites
Maybe somebody has put up a page of nude Catherine Zeta Jones pics, and we haven't been told yet ...
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AOL seems OK - although at times it can take a few attempts to connect. Very rarely get booted off though.
Can't wait for broadband at a decent price................................
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Broadband in the UK at a decent price is as far off as decent trains running on time.
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We use NTL, never had a problem with it. You get disconnected after 2 hours, but its quick and always reconnects.
We obveously live in an undesirable part of sheffield, as loadsa other areas have it but not ours, sniff
Kev
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OneTel £12.99 unlimited still OK at the moment. - figers crossed. But after TFI, anything seems good.
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There's a review of tried and tested ISPs at the site below that may be of interest.
www.internet-magazine.com/isp/top10.asp
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I use Freeserve Anytime @ £12.99 per month and do have some trouble connecting in the evenings. Sometimes takes up to 20 attempts.
I had a lot of bother with TFI but I understand that the wording of their agreement would not allow a refund of unused months as they say we are paying for the software rather than the connection.
Hmmm.
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Similar problems with Madasafish and locked into a £12.99 contract with 10 months to go. OK connection usually in the morning and early pm then it goes downhill with difficult connections and lots of dropouts in late pm, evenings. There is never any explanatory information on the service status page. Using the Tiscali and Bluebolt dial ups less often because I pay local call rate for those, but they seem to have fewer dropouts in the evening. It's fast looking like the most reliable services are those business-oriented ISPsthat take a fee and make you pay local rate--Demon, Pipex and ClaraNet.
David
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I don't know anything about the UK Internet, but here in the Philippines most corner stores will sell you a Net card, like a phone card, with a user name and password under a scratchoff thing. You buy about 10 hours for 3 or 4 pounds equiv, depending on the brand of card. There are at least 30 brands on the market. After midnight you generally get double hours for the same money. This means no bills, no lost hours. I usually have 5 or 6 on my computer table so I can switch between ISP's if one or other plays up.
Doesn't UK have something similar? Ours came about because people got fed up with being locked into one ISP with a fixed number of hours per month.
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Ian, I have news for you:
www.catherine-zeta-jones-pictures.com/
Have your Adult Check ID card number ready.........
Could be they're faked, I dunno...
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I've been happy with BT openworld at £15 a month. Connects first time most times and drops a couple of times a week. It's on for 3-4 hours a day every day.
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I recon that the people who pay for the calls at local rate get preference to the people who pay by the month with unlimited calls, not the other way round.
Virgin.Net is excellent for me when paying by the minute. I am now on AOL and it takes ages to connect, then it seems very slow at times.
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Try changing your Freeserve dial up number. It's on their site somewhere.
My old FS dial up no. was 0808 something. Now it's an 0845 no.
Rob
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The Anytime number is currently 0808 991 6001
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I use NTL broadband.
£25 per month for totally unlimited very high speed access. My download rates can get as high as 150kbps but usually stabilise at around 70kb. I think paying £10 more per month is completely worth it for lack of hassle and messing around with dialing up.
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Am I stating the obvious by saying that 0808 is free and 0845 isn't? (local rate).
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Jonathan
Am I right in thinking that your NTL is on cable?
£25 a month is what I would put at the market rate for broadband for mass use.
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Yes
cable modem, which comes through the same cable as the tv. I have to plug into the set top box.
i used to have to leave my pc on overnight to download large files, now i can download 1mb in under 15 seconds.
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My new FS anytime dial up number is 16164208452402602. Rarely get cut off now, but response time can be variable.
Rob
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Jonathan
I thought as much.
Out in the sticks here (3 miles from a County Town centre) we have no cable.
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Alwyn
Goto to www.freeserve.com/time/anytime/friaco/ to check the appropriate Freeserve Anytime dial-up for your area.
I use Anytime and must say that it usually connects first time.
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Freeserve Anytime is good when it works but needs up to 17-18 goes some evenings to connect. One trick if it then connects at 34,000 is instantly to disconnect and log on again. Usually you then get 40,000 which zips along perfectly well. It's still a bit galling to get e-mails from them telling you how wonderful the new service is when you've just taken 15 tries to connect!
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Thanks Brian, I did not know about that.
Cheers
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Trouble is that I'm a well-known tightwad, and certainly wouldn't use £12.99 worth of time. My 0845 number charges at local rates. That number is also my BT "best friend". Sad, or what?
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Colin,
That makes two of us sad tightwads then,
;-)
SB
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> The b*gg*r of it is that I also use beeb but have found it impossible to uninstall freeserve totally.
I'm intrigued.
Whatever else freeserve does, if you don't dial into their service, then you are not using their software.
Maybe you mean that your homepage (starting page) is still their page. In which case Tools, Internet Options, Use Blank
Maybe you mean that it still shows freeserve on the top of your IE screen. In which case it doesn't have any other effect.
Or maybe there are some internet setting swhich have not been returned to normal. In which case Tools, Interneet Options, Programs, Reset Internet Settings and Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Restore Defaults.
If its something else, I'd like to know and I will find a way to get rid of it. This is a particular thing which really annoys me.
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Some ISP's will co-exist happily together, others will not.
We found that Lineone overwrote everything in sight.
However, Freeserve and Virgin do not interfere with each other.
BTW if you do have two ISPs and one is an unlimited one, the other pay as you go, then make sure that the pay as you go uses the unlimited connection to dial up. That way you get the benefit of two distinct addresses without two distinct charges.
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Thanks to all for your thoughts.
In response to our boy from Brazil, I originally had freeserve only. When I got thoroughly p*ss*d off with same I thought 'no problem, I'll replace it with a different ISP' and at that time Internet mag gave beeb.net a good write up. Seemed OK so notified all my mates then found I couldn't get rid of freeserve without mucking up beeb. Current situation is that my e-mail address is beeb (anything I now receive via freeserve is junkmail), it's also my web home page, but to my aggrannoyance, I have to dial into freeserve to get it. Can't dial beeb even as my default because it locks out solid. Neither beeb nor (surprise surprise) freeserve have been able to shed any light - at 50p a minute. So freeserve gets the benefit of a % of my BT call charges and beeb gets nothing, despite providing an excellent service. Meanwhile freeserve doesn't improve. It's a right naus.
One of you expert guys has kindly suggested that the only solution might be to start again with a virgin hard disk. Naus, naus ...
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check the number you are dialling for the beeb;
1) on a telephone
2) on a friend's machine
You don't need to create anything, simply call up any dialling software or connection that exists and if it is correct, then it will probably fail on username/password.
If it works, delete all connections that you have created on your own computer, then do Create New Connection.
Also check tools/internet options/connection for a source of anomalies.
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Was with ic24 for years (2!) then they were bought by some cowboys - ended up being plagued by junk e-mails (never happened when owned by The Mirror Group)
Mailed Customer Support and they pleaded ignorance - well, I suppose a 17yr old New Deal Customer Support Executive would.
Have changed to Freeserve and have had no probs so far.
If all else fails I access via the Company connection but for work purposes only, of course. . . . . ! ! !
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I use BT Anytime, 15quid a month. It's fine during the day, but you can set your watch by it booting me off at 5pm and then it's murder to connect all evening until about 11.30. Most annoying thing is that it fails with an error so you can't leave it to redial itself.
I use freeserve pay-per-call when I'm really stuck, never fails.
If it wasn't that I use the bt mail account for some important contacts, I'd sack it all off and look elsewhere.
Interestingly, they provide an option to cancel the Anytime account as one of the top level automated repsonses on their customer service line, there must be a lot of sickened punters.
Lee.
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Most isp's will supply you with somekind of CD which attempts automate the setup and connection process for you. The best thing you can do with most of these is throw them at the cat.
All you need to make a dial-up connection is..
Phone number to dial
Username
password.
All you need to set up an email address in outlook express is
email address
outgoing mail server
incoming mail server.
(I think, it's a while since I've had to use any mail server but my own)
if you go to most isp's home site (catch 22 I'm afraid you need to be online to get online, try using a friends machine) then you can sign up for their service and they will supply you with the above information. Then all you have to do is go through the create a new connection wizard in dial up networking and create an internet connection using the above information. A wizard also exists in Outlook Express to create an email address. This way you don't get your internet explorer interface "modified" and you don't get any dodgy extra services installed. Now changing isp's is as simple as creating another connection and telling IE to use it.
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Andrew is right. I never use the CDs, manual config every time.
Well every time except the first time years ago and Netscape fired itself into every corner of the PC. The uninstall still left debris. It was a coincidental hard drive reformat a few months later that cleared it out.
David
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