On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 05:52:31PM +0000, Edenyard wrote:
Does anyone on here still use dial-up ISPs? I've been using Onetel but I'd like to give them the Big 'E', so I've been looking out for a replacement. Any ideas? I happened across an outfit called Highstream and they actually acknowledge the existence of Linux, which seems somewhat unusual. Has anyone ever heard of them?
Thanks for any ideas!
Gerald.P.S. Before anyone asks: I live in the half of the Martlesham Heath estate that CAN'T get broadband....
I'm at Newbourne, used to work at BT, same as you - no Broadband.
I've used *lots* of ISPs over the past few years, basically I've followed the best deal I could find. I think it's a sort of fact of life with ISPs that the best ones sort of inevitably deteriorate so you need to move fairly often (and they expire quite frequently too).
I have ISDN so one of my criteria is that the ISP has unmetered accounts which allow 128k ISDN, apart from that I just need connectivity and not much else as I have hosting, E-Mail etc. paid for elsewhere.
Currently I have two unmetered accounts, one with PlusNet which costs £9.99/month (no 128k with this one, just 64k) and one with Fast24 which costs £17.99 (or is it £18.99) per month and does allow 128k. There are total time limits on both accounts (I can remember what they are exactly but I *think* it's 80 hours on the PlusNet one and 160 hours (at 64k) on the Fast24 one). I have occasionally hit those limits which is one of the reasons that I have two accounts. The Fast24 limit is a hard limit, when you reach it you can't connect on the 0808 number until the next month starts, the PlusNet limit is 'soft', if you exceed it you get an E-Mail warning you, if you exceed it repeatedly they'll require you to go to a more expensive account.
I rarely get engaged tones or failed logins on either account, PlusNet is (I would guess) slightly better than Fast24 on that front. The PlusNet account offers lots of extras - 250Mb web space, CGI and Linux shell login for managing your web site, PHP, mySQL, etc.
Both tell you the dial up number and login detils that you need for Linux, so no need to unpick the Windows dialler to connect to them.