PMSL. But remember how poor the pr0n was at 100x120px. Even my imagination is higher resolution than that!

, when I was tugging away at the porn no one could call me to disturb me just when it was getting interesting! GRRRR!!!!

Especially seein as how you had waited 2 hours to buffer enough for 5 mins :giggle:

AH, downloading a 700MB video file on dial-up!! Those were the days!!!

Used to take about a month!!! Lucy I had the original "No Limits" Freeserve package.

In my humble experience "Home Hub" wireless in urban areas is a complete waste of time. There' s too much interference from other competing sources operating on, near or at "Multiples of " frequencies i.e. othetr wireless network users, mobile phone users, baby alarms, DECT phone bases, mini-cabbers with the power turned right-up etc, etc and diffrential effects caused by varying density of different building materials.

I turned to a powerline system, which works flawlessly, and without the vulnerability to hacking that the wireless systems (Even the encrypted ones) seem to have - the number of times I started a session only to find that the modem/router had had the system set-back to factory settings (loosing all protection) without any input from me.

Nick

Sounds like the problem is the laptop.

The wireless aerial is located in the screen panel, whilst the card is located in the base. It could be that the connection between the base and screen is not making correctly, this would cause the intermittent issues you have because the wireless signal will vary a lot as the aerial makes and loses its connection.

It could also be that the card itself is on the way out, after all it does contain a transmitter that can fail.

In my humble experience "Home Hub" wireless in urban areas is a complete waste of time. There' s too much interference from other competing sources operating on, near or at "Multiples of " frequencies i.e. othetr wireless network users, mobile phone users, baby alarms, DECT phone bases, mini-cabbers with the power turned right-up etc, etc and diffrential effects caused by varying density of different building materials.

I turned to a powerline system, which works flawlessly, and without the vulnerability to hacking that the wireless systems (Even the encrypted ones) seem to have - the number of times I started a session only to find that the modem/router had had the system set-back to factory settings (loosing all protection) without any input from me.

Nick

Powerline systems and data sent over them, can be seen by anyone in up to a 5 mile radius. They are inherently inferior security wise, and the only saving grace so far is not many people are using them.

The free sky broadband package is very limited in bandwidth. My sister is on the free one, all she does is browse the web, use online email and facebook games. She gets regular letters from Sky saying she has exceeded her monthly limit and should consider upgrading. I think the free sky is limited to 2GB per month, I downloaded that in 35 mins on my virgin cable connection last night.

I have to say I’m with SKY and have found them to be pretty good, certainly a lot better than BT. I’ve not had much time at home recently but it appears that SKY have altered their package for broadband and I am now paying £7.50 a month for unlimited downloads (I have SKY tv). I also noticed my speeds have gone up to 11mb/1mb approximately. Overall I am more than happy with their service so far.

Next step is move my router downstairs as my A/V receiver, Humax HDR T2 and BluRay can all be networked. Guess I will have to move my cordless phone base station though? :(

Update:-

Since upgrading firmware on the router and downloading the Dell drivers for the Intel Wireless card, performance of the wireless at home has been a LOT better.

We'll see if this is a sustained improvement or just a temporary thing...... but for now it seems ok.

I've got virgin 10M ,and a oldish ,but still not too slow PC, whereas Mrs has a steam driven laptop ( which she won't part with) . Now on my PC, I get about the advertised speed , whereas on the laptop ,I've had heady speeds of 4.5M( considering it's on Win2k ,and running at 500m, I consider that not bad).And that's on a micradigital DSL router ,running at 56 wireless to the laptop . Cheap as chips - but it's reliable .My son ,living across the road tells me that he's seen my signal at no worse than 70% -not bad for a cheapo router .

The old intel wifi drivers were full of memory leaks, handle leaks, and would slow down the whole laptop to a crawl after running for a few days. More recent drivers have fixed those issues as well as security issues - some pretty nasty - will be fixed.

Wifi routers, including some branded ones, have usually given up the ghost because of problems with overheating. If they don't fail, they just reduce power output which could have an impact on throughput if the signal strength & signal/noise drops where you are using your laptop for example.

Another thing I've found to really make a difference on laptops is the power management. Some manufacturers (Sony for one) seem to think I want to turn off my full-power setting on the laptop's wifi to save power. I personally prefer to have a working connection, so I tend to disable these kinds of power savings unless I'm really not going to have any means of powering from the mains, nor spare batteries. If I plug into a cabled network, I turn off the wifi though.

Unfortunately I no longer live in an area where broadband at UK levels is affordable, I'm paying about 75GBP/month for 3.5Mbit/s down, 800kbit/s up. Still, streaming over the gbit network works just perfectly hehe