Had Enough of Virgin BB, What are your thoughts on AOL?

[Pikey P]

Evening Chaps,

Tonight has been the last straw with virgin.net and there internet capping between 4 and midnight. So in the morning i am going to bin them off.

Does anyone have any experience or advice regarding AOl and there free laptop deal. Apart from the 24 month contract are there any other catches?

Cheers

Lord Pikey

[PJR]

I hated AOL.. Internet with training wheels on. Having said that, its perfectly possible to use them without all that cruddy software they almost insist you use. A friend of mine does this. I help him get it set up. One of AOL's saving graces (or at least it was last time I checked) is that its one of the few truly 'unlimited' isp's left.

Oddly enough, im with Virgin now (cable) and can't say that i've had any real problems with them. Decently fast (a solid 10mb). And for my cable service at least, the restrictions are only between 4-9pm now, not 4-12. Not great, but i'll manage ok, and thats still better than many isp's anyway.

I still don't think I could go back to AOL mind.. Assuming its ADSL you are after, have you looked at 'Be Unlimited' ? They usually come highly recommended these days. www.bethere.co.uk
Is the free AOL laptop really worth having? Tempting though it must initially seem.

P,

[Scraggles]

Pikey P said:

Evening Chaps,

Tonight has been the last straw with virgin.net and there internet capping between 4 and midnight. So in the morning i am going to bin them off.

Does anyone have any experience or advice regarding AOl and there free laptop deal. Apart from the 24 month contract are there any other catches?

Cheers

Lord Pikey

That's a joke right ?

try the sticky on this site or http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ or dslreports

laptop is not free, u pay for it by being stuck with them for 2 years and u cant get out even if it goes to 400kb oh and forget about a lan, 1 pc per connection...

[jas xjr]

aol runs a lot of stuff in the background, makes your machine really slow to boot up and run what you want.thats my experience anyway

[felga]

had it , just don`t go there , a big NO !!! Also Talk talk a big NO

I have Orange with livebox , i have it with 35£ mobile contract and i pay only 5£ a moth for 8Mb/s + you have free international calls us , australia anywhere ...

[Podie]

Virgin = Frying Pan

AOL = Fire

[esselte]

jas xjr said:

aol runs a lot of stuff in the background, makes your machine really slow to boot up and run what you want.thats my experience anyway

You don't have to use the aol s/w....At least not if you use an adsl router....

[navier_stokes]

If you really want customer service, try Zen, although you pay for it.

Other than that I'd recommend o2 for service... so far been completely faultless, and a bargain price if you have an o2 contract, still good value if you don't.

I'd steer well clear of Aol...

Edited by navier_stokes on Wednesday 16th April 13:00

[ginettag27]

Customer Service, Newnet They're surprisingly good and the service is a fair price and good.

[cptsideways]

I rate Metronet & so do the ADSL review people, never had any issues & they are small enough to answer email enquiries within an hour or two.

[JustinP1]

Pikey P said:

Evening Chaps,

Tonight has been the last straw with virgin.net and there internet capping between 4 and midnight. So in the morning i am going to bin them off.

Does anyone have any experience or advice regarding AOl and there free laptop deal. Apart from the 24 month contract are there any other catches?

Cheers

Lord Pikey

How much is is you want to download during that time?

I have never been capped through normal surfing, downloading software and online gaming etc.

If you are downloading numerous torrents during that time, maybe just get them to run midnight to 4pm when there is no capping?

[Scraggles]

just ran a couple of speed tests, seems average speedtest for 8 mb is 3.4

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=120...

www.merula.net

the other site tried to suggest that any of the big name brands would be an excellent deal, but last month downloaded 30 GB and uploaded 99 GB, some of them would throttle me massivley before getting anywhere near that

seems LLU is in area, O2 or Be - www.samknows.com

1. Up to 24 meg ultra-fast broadband
2. Up to 2.5 meg upload speeds
3. 24/7 unlimited usage
4. 24/7 member support
5. Free wireless modem

will have to look into it more