On 19 Sep 2006, "Norman Sandland" <someone@onetel.com> wrote:
Of the three, I've only used Eclipse (I'm on Evolution level one on this
line) but have used a number of different ISPs over the past 50+ months.
I have to say I have *rarely* if ever had to contact Tech Support with the
various ISPs (I have certainly done so once or twice, but for my clients,
not my own connections). Although I have a bias and have only been
a customer for some months, I doubt there's much to choose between
the ISPs you mention. You can look for comments on www.dslzoneuk.net
and www.adslguide.org.uk (I saw someone claiming problems with Eclipse
Evolution level four being "unusable" which I'd challenge, personally).
One possible 'hassle factor' is that many ISPs are offering DSL Max which
sometimes gives rise to problems. It might be worthwhile to see if there
are any 500/1000/2000 kbps services which come in at the 'budget' end
where the connection will be 'solid as a rock' - despite good speeds, I'm
getting random disconnections, usually just for a minute or two, but at
random times (as well as routinely, sometime between 0100 and 0400,
which I put down to the BT exchange equipment for now... It generally
isn't a big problem unless the ADSL router I am using takes up to 10 goes
to get back online, while whatever I'm downloading - usually listening to
some audio stream from a radio service - has been stopped... a bit of
a pain if I am recording it!)
To keep it open, you might sometimes (once in every 4 weeks, perhaps)
need to dial in to your old One.Tel account.
You should be able to simply collect mail on a day-to-day basis (but for
sending, you would need to enter the SMTP details from your new ISP,
as the One.Tel details _for_sending_ will only work when connected using
their service {to stop spammers using them}). One.Tel might have some
requirement for "keeping your account active" by dialling in on a regular
basis. You could ask the question somewhere like www.net4now.com or
on www.ispreview.co.uk to see if anyone knows, or ask One.Tel.
In the long run, you might consider getting a free account at yahoo.co.uk
and tell your friends/relations to use that. It would mean you could then
phase out use of the One.Tel mailbox (and similarly, and you might get
from any other ISP you switch to). Switching ISPs but keeping the old
mail address is sufficient of a nuisance that you'll regularly see comments
about getting a domain name and therefore having a mail address quite
independent of any ISP, in case of changing. I'd usually recommend it
but a freestanding web-mail service from Google or Yahoo could be a
better option for you, would be free, and would mean friends would
only need change their address book once to the new address (so in
6 to 12 months you could stop using the One.Tel account if no-one
was still using it, and remind anyone who did still use it that you'd no
longer see their e-mail in future). Hope that helps a bit.
