Heartland

Have been dithering about upgrading from dial-up to Broadband for a bit now. Trouble is there are 2 packages that seem acceptable (there are probably lots more, but I like to know who I'm shouting at if there's a problem later )

1) AOL Broadband Gold - £24.99 per month. No download limit (allegedly)

2) NTL - £9.99 per month. 3 Gbyte download limit.

Both are 1 mbps. Which, considering our machine is only hooking up at 31,600 kbps, is prolly a bit faster

Basically, is it worth an extra £15 a month for the AOL jobbie, or would 3Gbytes a month be more than adequate? Mr. Snowey has mentioned he'd like to download the odd video...alll I want is SPEED (not the kind either )

All help an' advice gratefully received

I've been against AOL all my life, and not just for that stupid browser interface. It's also not very reliable.

I'd go for NTL, and more technically aware people will probably choose against AOL, as well. Good luck!

It really depends what your downloading doesn't it?

I mean I could easily get through 2gig a day if I was downloading music etc..

And if you start using bittorrents then it'll definitely eat up your bandwith..

definitely worth getting it.

last time i looked (couple of months ago) demon internet had a package that was 2.2mb with no d/l limit was one of the best...

some also throttle bandwidth on certain ip ports, so that many filesharing apps get poor connection speeds apparently demon dont do that

a company called "zen internet" also seem quite good...

this site has a good breakdown of who offers what, and user ratings etc
http://www.adslguide.org/

have a look at the comparisons:
http://www.adslguide.org/isps/compare.asp

and check their listings:
http://www.adslguide.org/isps/summarylist.asp

We've got pipex. Don't know too much about it cos I'm not allowed on the internet but the customer service is good.

If you're reasonably technically adept and would rather not be constrained by your ISP, Pipex would be a good one to look into. As far as I know, they can do 1mbps and there's no download limit or silly dialler software. Just an adsl modem and your account details.

First things first, don't go near aol, it takes over your machine and is an absolute bugger to get rid of when you want to at some point in the future. To answer your question "is it worth extra" my answer is "it ain't even worth less".

Personally I prefer the adsl route as opposed to the cable one, but plenty of people get what they want from ntl and they're in the process of upping their standard offering to 10 meg with no caps. "In the process" meaning over the next year but you can expect caps to follow further down the line. If you're happy with ntl then do that.

I just signed up with Bulldog. It's a gamble with them, if you get the service all OK and don't need to get too involved with customer services then great, if not their customer services are famously bad.... at £17.50 including phone line for 8 meg uncapped I had to try it though.

This is a fast changing market and as such my main bit of advice would be to, if at all possible, go with a provider which offers a 1 month contract.

Cheers guys And cheers for the links QB

Having read that a 4GB DVD length film would take nearly an hour even with 10 Mbps, I don't think we'll be that patient. Be quicker to copy a mate's...

Having an NTL phone line does limit one's options somewhat But at the mo' it looks like NTL are winning.

@ Ruffers - I have heard other people muttering about how AOL infests a machine. Trouble is, how can you evict the bugger if you decide you don't want it? I've also heard that uninstalling doesn't entirely shift it?

aol is just horrible to use if you're used to using other things which you must be, as you're here. You can get rid of it but you have to hunt it down but in your situation it shouldn't really be in the equation at all. aol charge a premium price for people who are scared of the internet and want a nice cuddly package, and who don't want to know what's happening underneath.

Looking at your situation with an existing ntl phone line it seems to be a no brainer to me, just go with ntl. £9.99 and 1 meg is a good deal and that speed will be ramped up over the year.

Must admit, I am swayed by the price (short arms, deep pockets etc. )

And the promise of upping t'speed later on Can't say as I'm bothered about too many downloads anyway. Trading / weeding is the future after all As for being tied to a contract, I don't think 12 months at a tenner a month is too bad

BTW we have AOL9 lurking in the system at the mo'. I just don't want it to get in the way if we do go for NTL

Should be fine. My parents went form aol to wanadoo with no problems apart from my mum having to learn how to use outlook...

ruffers wrote:Should be fine. My parents went form aol to wanadoo with no problems apart from my mum having to learn how to use outlook...

She prolly knows more than me... Anyroad, cheers for t'advice. I've just found out that you have to phone AOL up to cancel a contract - so I may need to phone them up later

We got tiskali broadband and pay the as we were pating for dial up,16 quid a month,it's as well!,only 512 but much much faster,well worth it.My mates got wonadoo and says it crap,really slow?.