I've just moved house.
Why is this relevant to CGAA students and their studies?
Simply because it's going to take BT 2 weeks to reactivate my phone line/broadband...
As a substitute, I've bought a dongle (very stupid word!), which, in the few hours since purchase, has nearly been jettisoned out of several windows on account of its snail speed and general uselessness. I predict that my ability to respond quickly and efficiently to student questions and fizz enthusiastically over exciting preliminary sketches of human/animal hybrids etc. is going to be sorely impeded over the next few days.... Don't feel neglected if I'm slow to respond; just picture me instead, gnashing my teeth, tearing my hair and succumbing to dongle rage... Next time I pop up on this - or your - blog, I may be doing it from any establishment (other than UCA) with Wi-Fi; my consumption of over-priced corporate coffee and crap lukewarm burgers may increase to dangerously high levels...
Hi Phil,
ReplyDeleteI can sympathise, I was using one for the duration of my time in Maidstone and the ways in which I intended to destroy it became a running joke with the friends I keep in contact with over the net. Having said that I think the technology is flawed and overpriced for what it is at the moment BUT as far they go the T Mobile dongle I was using might have been OK in comparison to the troubles you seem to be having. In short, I was able to get speeds of 200 kb/s which allowed me to check email and keep tabs on social networks etc BUT if I downloaded anything or watched a video which is of course important it contributed to the pitiful transfer limit of 1GB a month and once I exceeded that they stripped it down to 10kb/s and even msn messenger crashed every 10 seconds. I *was* on the verge of smashing it to pieces, writing USELESS on a piece of A4 paper and posting it back to them before retreating to a remote Himalayan village, embracing God and spending the rest of my life searching for religious subtext in Samuel Beckett and Kafka out of sheer mania though, but as I say the functionality could tide you over. I also developed a few workarounds too for instance the d/l speed block did not seem to affect www.sendspace.com which allows you to send large files. Also if you top up (although extortionate) you got your full transfer limit and d/l speed back. So that's there for emergencies.
FYI I used the T Mobile broadband USB stick 120.
- Tom
Oh also, another caveat is that they have a particularly overzealous 'content block' which was schizophrenic about allowing you to view blogger and other important sites. However you can disable this entirely by registering either with your T Mobile phone number or by registering a credit card.
ReplyDelete- Tom
Nice to see you got your new place though Phil, congrats. Shame you didn't get those fluffy rocks from New Designers - I was tempted to steal you one :(
ReplyDeleteIMAGE
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy advice just piggyback on someone's unsecured network or if its password protected just guess it I can't tell you how many networks I've got onto just because I know the name of my neighbours pet, I did it for nearly a month when my old router broke just so I could use the internet on my laptop.
ReplyDeleteI just moved to a new place yesterday, wich, guess what, also doesnt have internet, but here I am leaving a comment from my home :D I too found even two unsecured networks :D planning to use it till we actually have our own internet :/
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion if people are dumb enough to leave their network unsecured they deserve to have people piggyback on their internet :D.
ReplyDeleteIt about time towns started to offer free internet - Korea has it why can't Whitstable?
ReplyDeleteSo bring on the 'Hippinet' I say (a new phrase i just made up) where we can all share no matter where we are.
We almost had this at one point when wireless first arrived but the Fraudsters soon put a stop to that - What a shame.
but alan you gotta balance that out with the fact korea has insane censorship rules so say about 80% maybe more of the internet is utterly unusable there.
ReplyDeleteI feel the pain, I'm having to use my phone to access the internet... of course this means that it takes a millenia to load google and crashes when I try myuca
ReplyDeleteroll on friday when plusnet sets up the broadband!