ISP opinions

Yeah - there have been a couple of threads about the best providers... but what is everyone using?

looked at adslguide - but there are just too many to choose from and their main advice was - go for what is reccomended to you by friends...

If you can get Virgin the bonus is you don't get stuck for 12 months, but it's not the cheapest and from time to time you can get bumped off although i've never had any of the problems a few people said I would have about connecting. Plus I got a free ADSL modem and connection with my deal. About £27.99 a month. I would have gone with others but my apartment was built a year after the 2001 moritorium on new cables laid when the dot-com bubble burst, so i can only connect to BT-partnered ISPs.

I'm with Tiscali. I pay £15 a month for broadband (the slowest one which is 156kbps). I've had no probs so far!

One bugger is that I had to sign up for a year but that doesnt bother me so much.

http://www.eclipse.net.uk/index.cfm?id=bbhome
£20 pm, monthly contract
sweet as!

The conclusion of my research was thus (looking at 512kb connections)

Tiscali
monthly: 19.99 (50 hrs) / 24.99 (unlimited)
setup: 25 / FREE
modem: FREE
extras: NA

Eclipse
monthly: 20.38
setup: 50
modem: 34
extras: 20mb webspace

PlusNet
monthly: 14.99 (1GB then 2.50 per GB)/ 24.99 (unlimited I think?)
setup: FREE with 24.99 option - not mentioned with other option
modem: FREE with 24.99 option - not mentioned with other option
extras: 250mb webspace (as additional extra)

Virgin
monthly: 24.99
setup: FREE
modem: 9.99
extras: 10mb webspace - NO contract

Pipex
monthly: 19.99 (1GB then 1.95 per GB) / 23.44 (unlimited)
setup: FREE
modem: FREE
extras: 50mb webspace

I went with Pipex (unlimited option) and these are sort of in my order of preference. Plusnet seemed to be quite cheap - but their website didn't describe their products very well (they had 3 or 4 diff ones - the only one that mentioned setup costs was the 24.99). The Eclipse site was also bad at describing its products - the links didn't seem to bring up a very relevant page.

Weird how you choose a product based on their website navigation and content but there you go... I guess it makes sense with ISP's though.

hah, look at that, I do only pay £24.99. Idiot me.