Among other things I do quite a bit of work online, and need a good connection all day. I'm not in a cable area, so it's the modem for me. I actually have three providers. One pay up front and pay local call charges (U-Net), which is very reliable, very fast and very expensive. It's used mostly for e-mail. Then there's ntl, which I find reliable but a bit slow. And also Onetel. No monthly charge, but 1p per minute any time of the day or night. Onetel is reliable and fairly quick, and 1p is not a big problem unless you are online for ten hours a day. If you are having a problem with connecting it _could_ be your phone line (between the house and the telegraph pole). Data connections have to be better than voice connections, so even if voices sound fine, your computer may be saying "Eh? Could you repeat that?" all the time.
BTW David, you say that older PCs are slow, well they are, but not if they run older versions of Windows. I often have seven or eight browsers (Ex5.5 and Netscape) open, plus Word 97, a non-Microsoft mail program (for virus reasons). My 1997 200 Mhz P2 with 32Mb is easily as quick as my father's brand new 800Mhz job. In our "home office" we even quite happily run a second monitor/mouse/keyboard terminal off this PC, so I reckon Windows is the problem. A cheap way of speeding up your PC is to reinstall an earlier version of Windows :-)
Chris
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Downloads are only ever as fast as the 'weakest' link so if you are downloading something from a very busy server or say, from someone via a modem (ie music downloads), it doesn't matter how fast your connection is or whether it is broadband as the download rate will still be naff! I don't think a faster PC would help to be honest, the pitiful 56k offered by landline modems could be handled by any PC of the last 15 years at full rate without any problems. We are talking 5k a sec here - anyone on a LAN (I use my laptop here at work and on 56k modem at home where it is dreadful) can get in the region of 300k a sec, now that is a good data speed. Everything these days, corporate web pages, anything transferred by or made by Microsoft is always so big filesize-wise it makes life very difficult for those of us at home.
With regards to your comments David, it is exactly because you are in a quiet rural area that you don't have too many problems. I moved up from London to Manchester recently and have had bad problems in both, but never when visiting "outlying" regions - BT have a lot of trouble getting everyone through to their servers in busy areas. If I download a 3 meg MP3 (music) file from the internet via modem, we are talking 30 mins here, your dad, on cable should expect download times of at least a third of a 56k modem. Never mind, am moving to Manchester soon so cable here I come...
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i use freeserve anytime, its only £12.99 per month, and i find it better than BT.
P.S. i think BT internet was on watchdog, because alot of people were sick of the long waits for connection.
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David Woollard wrote:
> We've had BTInternet for over a year and the £14.99 monthly
> Anytime service since it was introduced.
My iMac -- my normal work machine -- is connected to BT's DSL service (Openworld), and though the ordering and installation process was a nightmare, so far I have never had a problem with using it. It does what it's meant to do, quickly and unobtrusively. I think it's well worth the forty quid a month it costs me (especially since my previous ISDN link was generating bills approaching £600 a quarter). At home I use a laptop PC to connect to BT's Anytime. Most of the time it works ok, and I'm not dissatisfied with downloading speeds. But every so often, especially in the early evening, it won't connect. About a month or so ago this went on for about three days (the three days I had to work from home, of course), so I called the 50p/minute Helpline. After about twenty minutes of useless chitchat I was told that a virus had corrupted my modem drivers. So, to be on the safe side I re-initialised the laptop's disk and started again from scratch. Same thing. Then, about three hours later, I managed to connect and it's been fine ever since. What does this tell you about BT's scandalous Helpline?
I suppose I work on the "better the devil you know" principle. I would certainly change if someone else could guarantee me a better service.
Incidentally, did anyone see the BBC's Watchdog programme about Anytime on TV last week?
hj.co.uk runs on commercial servers, which as far as I know don't offer ISP facilities to individuals. Shame.
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A company in Manchester is offering uncontended lines. These are primarily aimed at companies, but I think that they are also available to individuals.
Post back if you want further info.
Jon
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David
In answer to how I manage with 32MB. Well, everything is pared down. Minimal installation of Word - only the bits I need, but the rest is there on the CD anyway. Not using Outlook for mail helps as well, as that's very hungry. Similarly with the browser: only what I need is installed. The 2Gig (!) hard drive does chatter away at times, but it's rare for the machine to be slower than I am. Things like video do slow the thing down badly, but I use that so rarely it doesn't matter. Every few months I think about what is on the machine and ruthlessly get rid of the junk. Now if only I was that disciplined about the loft.
Chris
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>>One thing I noticed was when we increased our own RAM, from 64 to 192, Internet and overall performance was massively improved.
Firstly, I would doubt that 192 is working. Or rather, it may function but it is unlikley that anything is using the memory.
However, the improvement from 64 will def. have made a difference to overall performance, but it is not related to download speed - for sure.
Also, it is unwise to get to excited about the connection speed it says that you have achieved. This is only an estimated speed given from the handshake process. It can be used as a broad indicator as to whether you got a good connection or not, but it most certainly isn't accurate.
Busy signals and difficulty to connect are usually a result of a lot of people using the service. However, performance normally isn't. Of couse, extreme peaks like NY can cause it, but it isn't usual for the ISP to be affected in this way.
It is normally related to one of two things; Traffic at some point between your ISP and the file you are trying to receive, and frequently the actual machine you are trying to receive it from, or noise on the line.
Try reconnecting.
As for Broadband - you should see an improvement, but this only impacts the speed between you and your ISP. The speed beyond them will be unaffected by this link. That's why it still runs and hugely below its seemingly likely capacity.
If you can get cable, this is clearly a good option at the moment. However, only if you don't have to pay too much for installation because the capacity of land line telephone networks is still growing very fast and will, probably, exceed that of cable.
Also, cable will reach a limit. These are not designed to be two-way networks and they have to shift an ever-increasing amount of information over ill-designed networks.
Don't get excited about wireless data, its not coming your way anytime in the next 5 years, at least, more likely 10.
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Mark,
As I'm working tonight I 've got Norton Utilities running with a display of real time RAM useage. The total is over 120MB at the moment and opening up an image program would push it up further still. So I may never hit the 192 but even 2x64MB wouldn't be enough for me. Actually my chip based video takes 8MB from the RAM to start so the 192MB is only 184MB available.
The things using RAM as I type are...Word 2000 22MB, Windows 34MB, Outlook Express 14MB, Internet Explorer 12MB, Firewall 15MB, Anti-virus 15MB plus loads of smaller background programs.
That's why I can't understand Chris how you manage on 32MB. Your machine must run very lean programs or the hard drive must be acting as virtual memory all the time. When our PC only had 64MB the hard drive was chattering all the while, now we hardly hear it mid session.
David
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David Woollard wrote:
> So I may never hit the 192 but even
> 2x64MB wouldn't be enough for me.
Thing is, its not so much the 192 as the fact that it doesn't use between 128 & 256 very well.
>
> The things using RAM as I type are...Word 2000 22MB, Windows
> 34MB, Outlook Express 14MB, Internet Explorer 12MB, Firewall
> 15MB, Anti-virus 15MB plus loads of smaller background
> programs.
Well, I don't know about all the smaller programs you've got, but you just showed 112mb used. I just opened all the same ones to see, and mine was only using 74mb. I wonder why ? Maybe just different versions.
> That's why I can't understand Chris how you manage on 32MB.
Older operating systems. You can still run Windows 95, for example, and there isn't much that won't run on it - provided you're happy with the older versions of some software.
M.
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So is it that there is an issue with PCs or Windows 98 having a limit on the RAM they are able to properly manage? You seem to say this may be 128MB? I didn't get this large RAM increase for any other reason than it was very cheap and the case was open for a new hard drive anyway.
David
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David Woollard wrote:
>
> So is it that there is an issue with PCs or Windows 98 having
> a limit on the RAM they are able to properly manage? You seem
> to say this may be 128MB?
No, not quite. What I meant was that it is better at using 64/128/256/512 etc. then it is at using memory in between.
I seem to recall that the natural limit is 512, although I can't remember for sure.
Windows, and the programs which run on it, are not necc. that good at fully utilising memory levels which lie between the natural steps.
M.
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Forgot to say W98 limit is I think 512Mb. Also I am still on Freeserve Off peak surftime at £6/month. (New members paying £9/month!)
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