Onspeed/Broadband Substitute merged thread

Jimney

I am paying £24.99 a month for BT Broadband, just out of 12 months contract use computer for about 3 hours per day. Saw article about Onspeed on Mad About Bargains. Would this be any good for me? Thanks.

cheghead

Onspeed use 'graphic compression' to make dial up faster. Down side is graphics on your browser will appear in lower resolution. They offer a free trial so might be worth trying before buying. I'm on AOL dial up and found upgrading RAM (have 512mb ddr) on PC to make same difference without losing loss of resolution and load pages quite quickly in my case.

andy88_2

I use Onspeed on dial-up (I've just renewed my subscription). It compresses text by a factor of 10. Graphics compression has a choice of 6 levels; I'm midrange. Overall average compression 4.2.

There is some graininess/blurring on some pictures, but you could change the level or temporarily switch it off if you were receiving pictures you wanted to print. Webpages load about 3 times faster.

Something I've wondered about is to use it with a low-cost payg broadband connection (maybe Lixxus), as it would reduce charges based on amount downloaded. For people downloading large amounts of mp3 or video there would be little point in this idea though.

Jimney

Looked at onspeed site says unable to provide broadband on the telephone number provided so the decision is made for me. Upgrading RAM looks the way to go. Thanks to both of you.

andy88_2

Jimney wrote:

Looked at onspeed site says unable to provide broadband on the telephone number provided so the decision is made for me. Upgrading RAM looks the way to go. Thanks to both of you.

This is confusing. Onspeed is not broadband, but for some cases will be an alternative to it. Now you're used to bb, it might seem a step back to have dial-up and Onspeed.

Upgrading your RAM will be beneficial in other ways, but I'd be rather surprised that it would have the effect cheghead describes, as the computer speed and capacity will be thousands of times greater than the dial-up (eg it takes 3-4 min to download 1Mb)

cheghead

Indeed the RAM will not help very much for downloads but certainly makes a big difference to surfing speed on dial-up.

Jimney

Not surprised your confused it is Lixxus i tried for broadband not Onspeed (sorry still got L plates on regarding computers) think i will be safer sticking with broadband for now!!! BT do a cheaper deal £17.99 a month probably go with that until i have more confidence to try something new. Thanks a lot for your help.

Jonni2bad

Jimney wrote:

Not surprised your confused it is Lixxus i tried for broadband not Onspeed (sorry still got L plates on regarding computers) think i will be safer sticking with broadband for now!!! BT do a cheaper deal £17.99 a month probably go with that until i have more confidence to try something new. Thanks a lot for your help.

Jimney, maybe it's time to say goodbye to BT...

I was once in your position, before being converted by the power of MSE
I swapped from the old BT broadband to their Basic package on £17.99. Then I started reading the forums on here, and elsewhere, and found I could get the same download speed (512k) but with NO DOWNLOAD limit, from EFH Broadband for only £11.75 per month. BT's basic package only allows for 1mb downloading per month, and it costs £4 extra to go over this, even by only the slightest amount :mad:

There are many others offering much, much better than BT, so say goodbye to them and save yourself a lot of money. If you migrate to EFH for instance, you'll pay £35 to switch, but you'll 'break even' inside 6 months, then you'll be at least £6.25 better off per month.

On a final point, should you decide to switch supplier, make sure you get a MAC code from BT, NOT a CBUK number - some of their people don't realise there is a difference, and you need the MAC code to migrate. They will, of course, ask who you are moving to just in case they can offer the same deal, but they won't when you say it's EFH (or similar) as they are not prepared to reduce their costs by that much.

Good luck!!

mike_paterson

If you are quick you can get uncapped 512 kbps broadband for 2 years for less than 7.10 per month with e7even. Bit be quick offer ends today !

By the way onspeed is not much cop - you can try it for free at www.download.com and see for yourself.

Regards
Mike

andy88_2

A bit slow Mike - these 2 threads were adjacent most of the time, but it took you over a day to notice; what makes you think others would not have seen the other one?

I like the product but can say so without claiming benefits for recruiting new customers, though I think there is such a scheme.

If I eventually combine it with Lixxus, my connection will average 15 times faster than yours and be cheaper

In the meantime, one use where it's effect is very noticeable is in simultaneous browsing and listening to internet 'radio' on a dial-up connection

mike_paterson

I am interested in the maths you use to show that your connection will be 15 times faster and cheaper.

It is impossible for your connection to be this much quicker as the current technology does not allow it. If what you really mean is that it will seem 15 times faster, then you are wrong as well. I have done the tests on broadband and the speed performance increases you would expect to get through accepting poorer quality pictures are non-existent as the vast majority of any delay is in latency and delay in the internet and other servers.

In fact in many of the tests I did, using Onspeed actually slowed the connection, probably because it adds additional links and complication into the chain. Onspeed will not compress files that are already well compressed like mp3 files so how useful it is depends on what you do. I am sure its effects are much greater on dial-up, but they are insignificant on a broadband connection.

I am also unsure as to how it is cheaper - that would no doubt depend on you downloading very little ! Start500 Flex costs £11.91 + VAT (£13.99) and provides a 512kbps connection with a 1 GB limit per month. The (now closed) offer I mentioned would give you the same connection speed, with unlimited downloads for an equivalent price of slightly over half of that.

If you are meaning the payg option then you pay £1 plus vat for each 20M which is very expensive ! It would not take you long to spend a load of dosh even if onspeed suddenly gave you miraculous results at an extra £1.99 per month.

As I said in my original post - try it out for free :
http://www.download.com/Onspeed/3000-2155_4-10293068.html?tag=lst-0-1 and see for yourselves.

I have also noticed the following news from http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=business&id=1748 :

Oslo-based Opera Software, best known for its Opera Web browser, has announced that it plans to integrate SlipStream Data’s Web and e-mail acceleration technology into the next release of its desktop Web browser. Set to integrate into Opera 7.60, Opera claims that it will enable users up to six times faster browsing on dial-up and wireless connections, a particularly neat feature for those with limited bandwidth.

Opera is a freebie, and I guess version 7.6 will cause a few worries for onspeed.

Good Luck all
Mike