Internet from the dark ages?!

Big_Graeme

RumRat wrote: »

How last century......:eek:

You spend time in Norfolk and call me ;-)

I'm in the "more you do outside of work hours the more they expect you to do" club.

debitcardmayhem

Don't know about this technology bit but I remember I couldn't get a signal through when it was foggy, mind you I was using semaphore

GunJack

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Don't know about this technology bit but I remember I couldn't get a signal through when it was foggy, mind you I was using semaphore

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

old Navy lag dcm ?? Wonder how many of current "mobile comms" experts have even heard of semaphore ??

RumRat

Big_Graeme wrote: »

You spend time in Norfolk and call me ;-)

I'm in the "more you do outside of work hours the more they expect you to do" club.

I'm an anthropology professor and it's vital for research..;)

Quiet_Spark

Bigphil1474 wrote: »

Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember dial up, and also when the thing my phone was made for was for making phone calls.

Same here.
My first "dabble" was via a 9600 baud US Robotics modem that connected via serial port, and the internet (as most people know it) didn't even exist.

Same goes for the phone. It cost £1.50 + VAT per minute to make a call, and you were lucky to see half a day of use with a handful of calls.
On the plus side, the phone was big enough to turn any would be mugger in to a permanent vegetable if you smacked them around the head with it.

usefulmale

Bigphil1474 wrote: »

Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember dial up, and also when the thing my phone was made for was for making phone calls.

Sadly, I'm old enough to remember when the internet didn't exist.

Richard53

Kaimoo wrote: »

Our adsl connection was that slow it was unable and currently in a dispute with bt, paying nearly £35 for lime rental and Internet that is 6mb off peak and less than 2mb off peak making it useless in a house with a small family.

Rural Wales - same monthly charge, and the best I can get is 700kb download and 300kb upload, and that's at 4 am on a Sunday when no-one else is online. That's the best - it's usually half that and occasionally one tenth. Last year we had a bit of high wind and we lost it altogether. It took BT Openreach six weeks to restore the line.


That's my definition of useless.

PenguinJim

sweetintuition wrote: »

A friend recently told me she was in Indonesia and internet was like the speed of light.

That will be, like, fibre optics.

sweetintuition wrote: »

Also not sure what you mean by "act accordingly". I thought I did that by trying to find a workaround (trying different devices and services).

I presume they meant that you should stop trying to connect to an obviously patchy service if your service keeps cutting in and out, and write the email offline. Then go online and send it when you've got off the bus.

A._Badger

I suspect the problem is the hype generated by technology 'journalists' and the phone companies. I spend most of my time in Kent and parts of Sussex and find the O2 signal (the best of them where I am - though that's not saying much) hopelessly unreliable for email and, frequently, useless for making phone calls.

And please, don't even start with the ;you should be grateful! When I were a lad...' stuff. I'm old enough to have once relied on push-button phone boxes.

The fact is that we pay a lot of money for these services and are constantly being bombarded with hype about what smartphones can do. Well, yes, they can. Sometimes. In big cities and where the phone companies can be bothered to provide coverage. Many who live and work elsewhere get a very different experience.

Mr_Toad

I agree with Gunjack.

I think a big part of the problem is that people believe the adverts/hype they see on the box that show people doing everything, everywhere at top speed whenever they want to.

Reality is something different and location is everything. I used to have more problems in central London than anywhere else, largely to do, I suspect, with lots of steel and large buildings along with with more mobile devices per square inch than almost anywhere else all fighting for a signal.

There are a lot of low signal zones in the concrete and steel canyons, then there's the moving faraday cage passing what signal you have between cell towers as you go and you're surprised that service is patchy.

At home, away from the cities, I get a fantastic signal from giffgaff/O2 and my phone and tablet perform pretty much as the adverts itimate they should.

I have to say that the girlfriend is with EE and compared to me her service is rubbish in the home village. I also have a friend who can only get a signal on whatever Orange is called these days in the village where he lives less than 5 miles from me.