Talk-Talk What I Know So Far....

nicp97

I've a BT landline at about £11 a month and NTL broadband at £17.99 a month, so the £20.99 Talk Talk package looked quite good. TT promised the BB connection on May 6, so, I rang NTL and said I wanted to terminate my contract at the end of May. Firstly the girl at the other end said getting a BT line and then a connection would take 5 months ( absolute cobblers) and when that tack didn't work she said " Ok, we'll cut your broadband to £9.00 a month". One phone call saved £108 a year. The cost of caller display and the £30 connection fee has made TT unviable.

EdCov

1899, 18866 amd probably others have numbers for people on cable and non-BT lines. So rather than calling the 1899 number which will probably get blocked you could program 02081 804 804 into your phone, and use your free call allowance.

The rates are slightly different, but I think on the numbers that you are likely to be using they are the same.

Free broadband also means you can use VOIP, and of course for cheap mobile calls get a contract mobile with free minutes and free line rental for the life of the contract (and hopefully a bit extra via quidco).

I hope that helps someone.

--Tony--

alanw888 wrote:

Dont forget that Gmail 'reads' all your mail and you will be spammed at some future date .......

Check it out before you think it is a Hotmail/yahoo competitor

nonsense, can you substantiate your claim Gmail (Google) intend to spam its users!

Vital_Spark_2

Claire_DC wrote:

Peer 2 Peer - basically a term for file sharing between people using a designated programme/client for it..eg bittorrent, soulseek etc.

:eek: I am lost with all these abreviatoins. Would it be possible for any of you so obviously "in the know" to open a thread listing all these abreviations you're using regarding computer and broadband use?

This wee El Thicko, would greatly appreciate :j :j :j that help soz she don't get so lost.

niff_noff

jandanjan wrote:

Where else is there to have a non ISP restricted email address which is good at filtering out as much of the spam as possible or where would people recommend apart from hotmail?

Many Thanks Team!

I use Bigfoot, which is an email forwarding service. Sign up for a free account which will give you "user@bigfoot.com" address. You then tell Bigfoot where to forward you emails to a target email account eg "user@onetel.com". Then if you change ISP, you just have to update Bigfoot with the new target email account. As far as all your contacts are concerned your email will always be "user@bigfoot.com" regardless. You can pay for spam filtering (us$5.95/quarter) and other email managemnet services if you need them.

wardy_1976

DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE!

There is no such thing as a free service. They have you tied in to various call charges and packages which in the end equal out to the same price as other service providers, except with crap customer service and enough red tape to cover Old Trafford.

I have also been reliably infomred by one of my BT contacts that TT cannot supply this service until they have over 28,000 subscribers. As TT have to rent the network from BT they will not give away any free service without recouping the cost from somewhere. Check the small print and shop around before jumping on the bandwagon.

I am not sure what speed they are offering for this service but I bet it is the same false advertising as Bull Dog (another NTL crap service). How many people have actually recorded over 8mb DOWNSTREAM service?????? The advertised speeds are upstream only. Meaning you web page will load faster but your downloads will still be limited to 2mb or under (depending on how close you live to a BT exchange).

--Tony--

Vital_Spark wrote:

:eek: I am lost with all these abreviatoins. Would it be possible for any of you so obviously "in the know" to open a thread listing all these abreviations you're using regarding computer and broadband use?

This wee El Thicko, would greatly appreciate :j :j :j that help soz she don't get so lost.

P2P is the sharing of files over the internet. If we are to be honest with each other its the illegal (not allowed on this site) sharing of films and software (although i'm sure people will say its not) you have a shared file on your pc and so does everyone else which become a massive collection of files available to all (who are members) to download.

Any more just ask.

--Tony--

jandanjan wrote:

Where else is there to have a non ISP restricted email address which is good at filtering out as much of the spam as possible or where would people recommend apart from hotmail?

Many Thanks Team!

You really can't beat gmail its fantastic at filtering spam but I also find hotmail is good too but you do have to go into the settings and change your spam settings, you can go from everything from accept everything to only people in your address book but the intermediate setting is perfect.

redux

wardy_1976 wrote:

DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE!

There is no such thing as a free service. They have you tied in to various call charges and packages which in the end equal out to the same price as other service providers, except with crap customer service and enough red tape to cover Old Trafford.

I have also been reliably infomred by one of my BT contacts that TT cannot supply this service until they have over 28,000 subscribers. As TT have to rent the network from BT they will not give away any free service without recouping the cost from somewhere. Check the small print and shop around before jumping on the bandwagon.

I am not sure what speed they are offering for this service but I bet it is the same false advertising as Bull Dog (another NTL crap service). How many people have actually recorded over 8mb DOWNSTREAM service?????? The advertised speeds are upstream only. Meaning you web page will load faster but your downloads will still be limited to 2mb or under (depending on how close you live to a BT exchange).

You make some interesting points, but ...

A BT contact isn't necessarily privy to the whole of a competitor's business plan, even if they are a supplier to it. TT probably has over 28,000 customers for this already. Was this a misprint for a rather larger number?

Bulldog is part of Cable and Wireless, not NTL.

I'm slightly confused about which way is up or down.

Skyhigh

Lets get a few myths straight here guys, this post may meander but hopefully there are many helpful points.
I'll be covering the Internet aspect of the Talk Talk deal.

I run three broadband account (basically), one is Karoo based (4MB), one is AOL (4MB) (still) and one was AOL but has been switch to the new Talk Talk (8MB, apparently) plan, so we'll see how they compare after a few months. )


The new Talk Talk plan is £21 (ish) a month.

This includes line rental and broadband, I'm ignoring the "free broadband" as its more like "included within the price, but we'll call it free to lure people in".
Sure there is an extra £30 connection fee, but really thats a minimal monthly increase.

The contract is a bit long, but nearly all major ISP's lock you in for 12months anyhow, most mobile phone contracts are 18month now also - but not many people complain about it anymore....
Even on an 18month contract, compared to BT/AOL and other ISP's you'll still save money in comparison to a standard 12month contract.

Still its cheap, it'd be cheap at nearly double the price.

Take this from someone who is forced to use Kingston Communications Karoo service and has to pay their over-priced costs.
The word 'monopoly' springs to mind, no...not the board game....

The *bandwidth* (how much data you can transfer, basically) is 40GB a month for Talk Talk.
Most suppliers with limits, BT, Freeserve etc limit it to less than 5GB anyhow - while still charging you up to £30 a month purely for broadband.
So, you get more bandwidth than 90% of suppliers for alot less, so most people will be better off in this aspect.

The only contender is AOL.
Now, AOL do not limit bandwidth, they have a decent ping (especially for gamers) and an OK contention ratio - but they have the worst user support, even worse than BT.
But you can download as much as you like.

Companies like BT rely on people not switching suppliers as its too much hassle.
After watching a few interviews it seems BT will not be (soon) dropping their broadband prices, instead they are going for the 'more junk' feature, by soon offering a 'BT TV' style service - which is still not worth the cost compared to Talk Talk.


Most users will use less than 3GB bandwidth a month, easily, especially if only browsing.
Unless you are downloading alot of videos, music or similar.

Despite what they say, just about all ISP throttle to be honest or even in some cases packet sniff - for example Karoo sniffs for Paramount to catch users downloading Paramount copyrighted content.
Its a fact unfortunately.
Lines go down, servers crash, cards burn out, connections get 'lost' and similar, although sometimes alot more often with some ISP's over others....

If you use P2P services then you just have to get over it, leave your PC downloading overnight or similar.
If you are *serious* about downloading anything, you should really be subscribing to a newhost for access to newsgroups, such as https://www.newshosting.com via https://www.newsleecher.com.
Although if you're that serious about downloading then you'll pay for a seperate ISP with unlimited bandwidth such as AOL anyhow and won't bother with Talk Talk in the first place.


Having looked into it, Talk Talk appears to be a fantastic deal for *standard* users who do not download alot of video files or similar, which really is 90% of all general internet users.
If you are worried about how much bandwidth you use, simply download one of many free bandwidth monitoring programs, run it over a few months and see how much bandwidth on average you use.
If its less than 40GB, consider switching, if its a bit more...consider switching and cutting back, if its alot more (such as 200GB like myself...) then carry on.





Now for some points:
Gmail offers just about a TRUE 2GB account limit, this is a huge amount more than most mail providers - definitely the major ones such as Yahoo and Hotmail.
(Discounting some of the Linux user group accounts....)
Gmail does not "read" your emails, it simply scans for keywords and displays targetted ads that are barely noticable.
Definitely less noticable than the damned flash banners you get from Hotmail and Yahoo.
Lets also mention Gmail offers superior customisation, filter customisation, RSS feeds and even the handy ability to search your emails.
Have a look about, alot of companies are copying Google, (can you say MSN search?), also the Gmail service.

Gmail using algorithms to catch keywords should be the least of your fears.
MS have about 62 pieces of software within the most recent version of XP that report nearly everything you do, including what searches up make from the 'Help and Support' function in windows - providing you are connected to the internet.
(Solution? Use Linux)

Plenty of other advertisers capture information about your online habits, including the webstat software monitoring the useage of this site, they know your IP, your OS, your browser, where you were referred from, how long you spent looking at each page, the keywords you use, the search term you use, how often you log in, where you go after to leave each page and the site....plus lots more.



Once again, Talk Talk appears ok for STANDARD users, as I said before if you are 'serious' about downloading anything in quanitity and using a large amount of bandwidth then you should have no problem in paying for a seperate ISP with unlimited bandwidth such as AOL and even access to usenet, so you probably won't even be considering switching to Talk Talk in the first place.

If you host websites, servers (any form windows, linux running even simple MYSQL databases) and you've even considered using Talk Talk then you really need to re-consider your business practices.
Note: This won't apply to most people......





On a penultimate note:
AOL provides a good connection service.
Don't ever bother calling their tech support, they really are the worst of the bunch.
Only call them regarding your payment / service, never with a hardware/software based question.
I once called and asked their current 'contention ratio' for my area, whereupon I was told by the 'engineer' that I had just made the word up.......

Finally:
I remember Globalnet, years ago, having to pay monthly for the ability to access the Internet on my 14k modem, then paying Xp per minute on top of that.
(First phone bill for the quarter? over £400....oops!)