(Ted Harding) wrote:
Thanks, Tim and Brett, for the good comments and the tips!
I'm pleased to learn about Eclipse:
and about Black Cat:
I can certainly recommend my current ISP E7Even http://www.e7even.com - they offer an unlimited 512kbps connection for the equivalent of £10 per month as long as you are happy to pay for a years worth up front - free installation if you pay for 2 years (240 for two years, and thats it). They also regularly offer top-ups at a discounted rate (I recently added 6 months to my subscription for £30).
Their service has gone through a number of upgrades earlier this year, but once these had finished around April reliability of the connection has not been an issue, and with free setup tech support on a 0845 rate number for 30 days (after that its pound-a-minute), and dialup account as backup, I find it more than enough especially at the price. Obviously, email support is free and they appear to have some sense - I believe they run on a mix of BSD and Linux server-side as well so definate brownie points for that.
One gotcha, at least for me, was their free bundled .co.uk domain name - you cannot have this point at your DSL line, and have to set up POP mailboxes for any mail aliases you want through their web site so be forewarned (I registered my DSL line as a seperate domain with easily.co.uk for about a fiver IIRC). The domain is not registered unless you do so through the site after being connected, so its not a deal-breaker as I easily made up the difference in cost, in the first month in fact.
I believe they still have places on their free speed upgrade if you apply relatively soon, giving you 1mbps DSL at £10pcm. You can get an ethernet modem from them, which I did way back when, but I don't know about prices - it was bundled when I signed up. If they are still providing the same model as I got, google for firmware updates as it doesn't come shipped with Firewall, and also has an open Telnet management port WWW-side out of the box (oops)!
They also offer a recommend-a-friend program (without sounding like I am just after a quick buck, my referral code is 701738 if anyone finds my recommendation useful) which is worth 2 months extension per sign-up I believe.
HTH,
Jim Rippon