We are currently on Wannadoo dial up access, and are thinking of going to broadband. Which would be the best to go for and who should be avoided?
That’s a difficult one to answer Steve as everyone will have different tales of good and bad. I’ve been with BT Broadband, BT Yahoo as it’s now called, for a couple of years now and never had a minutes problem but others would say don’t go near them. I wouldn’t touch NTL at any price but again others will say they are the best.
They are all re-selling the same package from BT, except the cable companies, and it would come down to their customer service in the end.
Have a look here for a complete run down of ISP’s
adslguide.org/
I use NTL and haven’t had any complaints. I’d also check out how difficult it is to switch providers if you aren’t happy with the service. A friend of mine had serious trouble getting out of Tiscali’s contract after having loads of problems with connectivity. Also if you are running a home network find out if you can use the connection to setup a home network as not all ISP’s allow this.
Coffeeholic:
They are all re-selling the same package from BT, except the cable companies, and it would come down to their customer service in the end.
That isn’t strictly true, Neil. The vast majority of them are selling BT IPStream based products, but the part that BT provide for that is only half the story. With this product BT basically provide an IP connection between your house and a point somewhere inside your ISP. It’s your ISPs responsibility then to provide everything else, which includes the servers that do the authentication (RADIUS servers), and the DNS servers. Depending on your deal with the ISP they may also provide an email service, a usenet news service, and any number of other things. They also provide one of the most important bits - the actual connection to the Internet, and this can vary hugely in quality from ISP to ISP depending on how much money they’ve invested in their network.
So there is considerable scope for variations in quality between the various DSL providers.
Paul
(Who works for the company that runs the DSL service for one of the top two UK ISPs.)
That’s true Paul, I meant that the bit from house to ISP would be BT, which is why I said except for the cable companies. I realise that once it gets to the ISP the differences start in terms of what is included in the package and how good their service is.
I have a 1gig conection with NTL and have had for about 3 years! and after thinking about it, I have a tip top service! so good in fact I would not even think about going elsewhere!
So Neil is right diferent people have diferent opinions on ISP’s I also think a lot depends on where you live!
That’s it Ian, you’ve had good service from NTL, I wouldn’t touch any of their products even if they were free. I’ve had great service from BT and others have had terrible experiences.
Another good source for broadband info is:-
HTH
Henrys i too have had NTL for about 4/5 years now i have a 1mb connection and never had any problems but unlike Niel i wouldn,t touch BT simply for a couple of facts that you will be capped on your connection unlike NTl, the other fact is that BT are way too expensive and have always had the capability to give broadband to every and each household in the uk but WHY they havent done it i do not know, so i hold a grudge against them for that.
Look here for the savings…
home.ntl.com/page/broadbandcompare …
Stick to NTL HC the 1mb connewction is about to be upgraded to 1.5mb for free.
If you live in a telewest or NTL area then go for that, if you can only get adsl then my advice is www.pipex.net
no limit, 12 email boxes, 50 meg of webspace and only £23.44 a month, with free modem and no set up charges. 
I have just changed from Wanadoo’s dial-up, to Wanadoo’s Broadband. Wanadoo took over Freeserve a little while back. That means I don’t need to notify everyone about a change of e-mail addy, or anything else.
When I say just, I mean earlier on today. So I only have very limited experience of their broadband service. So far it seems very quick except in here, maybe the servers were a bit pushed around 3 o clock?
Tesco’s broadband is looking like a good deal.
£19.97 for 512k with unlimited monthly download
Theyve got everything about broadband here Steve have a good look round.
We,ve been on AOL for a couple of years, very good stable service, the only problems we have had with it was the difficulty in running a 3 machine network via software proxy. Since they supported routers we’ve been on that and it is very good. For a single machine though, it is good, with freephone support. As for others, we were early adopters of Pipex, it was a disaster, might be better now. A freind of mine was round 3 days ago, he changed from AOL to Tiscali, for the cheaper price, and regrets it.
Im on pipex mal, never had a days problem with it.
Im glad to hear it Chris, our experience was a total nightmare, it was off for an entire month at one stage, was always intermittant. We were early adopters though like I said, so I cant speak for the last couple of years. we also spent about £40 in calls to support, which was really no support at all and routinely kept us on hold for 20-30 mins, we sent emails and letters, (unanswered) and to cap it all a manager of the company advised me to cancel my bank account to avoid the contract, which of course he said he would deny if anything came of it! all true! In the end we bit the bullet and paid to get out of the contract.
Gurner:
Im on pipex mal, never had a days problem with it.
Also on pipex and never had problem with it.
Simon:
I have just changed from Wanadoo’s dial-up, to Wanadoo’s Broadband. Wanadoo took over Freeserve a little while back. That means I don’t need to notify everyone about a change of e-mail addy, or anything else.
When I say just, I mean earlier on today. So I only have very limited experience of their broadband service. So far it seems very quick except in here, maybe the servers were a bit pushed around 3 o clock?
my sister did the same a few days ago, she seems pleased except something keeps changing her homepage to a ZB one -
I suggested running her AV - anyone got any other ideas ?
I haven’t looked at it yet - she only emailed me this-evening
do wannado provide a firewall ? I enabled the XP SP1 basic firewall last week for her ( it’s a new system)
I don’t know if Wanadoo have a built in firewall or not. I didn’t even consider it. I have my own, paid for AV and Firewall.
So far I’ve had no problems and I’ve spent a lot of time using the broadband hook-up this week.
I would think that your sister has picked up one of those little bugs. Unless it’s a Homepage set by the manufacturer of her box.
AV needs to be on all of the time, its not a run and switch off type of prog really and, as its a new system, I would expect its got the capacity not to be troubled by running essential programmes as well as the programmes that she wants to run.
I would recommend downloading Spybot S & D and Ad-Aware SE and running them, if its a dodgy homepage.
Simon:
I don’t know if Wanadoo have a built in firewall or not. I didn’t even consider it. I have my own, paid for AV and Firewall.
So far I’ve had no problems and I’ve spent a lot of time using the broadband hook-up this week.
I would think that your sister has picked up one of those little bugs. Unless it’s a Homepage set by the manufacturer of her box.
AV needs to be on all of the time, its not a run and switch off type of prog really and, as its a new system, I would expect its got the capacity not to be troubled by running essential programmes as well as the programmes that she wants to run.
I would recommend downloading Spybot S & D and Ad-Aware SE and running them, if its a dodgy homepage
.
I put Norton AV on the pc when she bought it - I’ve also put ZA , Spybot and ad-aware since!
The problem is a trojan (a version of Troj-startpage), everything could find it but was unable to delete it!! ( the removal instructions on the symantec website didn’t work either!) I found a removal tool on the net which seems to have stopped it working although she tells me Norton still finds it when it scans!
I haven’t spoken to her for a week or so - so it must be working ok 
At the moment NTL are offering 300 Kbps at £15.99 / month for a year plus other discounts on their broadband.
I asked to try the faster 750Kbps and they said I could have it free for 2 months. When I phoned up to say I didn’t really notice the difference in speed they have given me another three months for free.
Denis F
Don’t forget to turn off ‘System Restore’ before running the removal tool and run it while in safe mode. The reason you have to turn off system restore is because the files held there cannot be deleted. So even after removal of the nasty it is still found in your system restore files after rebooting. Turn it back on after rebooting the PC
In Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 you will also need to edit the following registry entry. Editing the Registry can damage your PC If you are at all unsure about this don’t do it yourself.
At the taskbar, click on ‘Start’ then ‘Run’. Type ‘regedit’ and press Enter. The registry editor will open.
Before you edit the registry, you should make a backup. On the ‘Registry’ menu, click ‘Export Registry File’. In the ‘Export range’ panel, click ‘All’, and then save your registry as Backup.
Locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE entry:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\tlc
And delete it if it exists.