ISP shopping
I’m ISP shopping.
I’d been considering it anyway, as I’m still using ye olde ADSL1, and in the past couple of years, ADSL2+ has become available in my neck of the woods.
I’ve been using my current ISP, Netspace, for about 7 years, I think. Over that time they’ve been pretty reliable, but not without fault.
My two major beefs with them have been:
- Every so often they’ll revise their plans, and a new plan which is cheaper and better will start up. But they don’t upgrade their customers; they don’t even mention it. Unless you go looking to see what the latest offer is, you wouldn’t see that you could change and get more bandwidth and a lower monthly fee.
- In an outage, the authoritative place to check the network status is their Newsdesk page. But that’s not accessible from mobile phones; at least not my mobile phone — in part because it’s behind a logon screen which doesn’t seem to work in some phone browsers. So you have to be at a computer, connected to the net to find out why you can’t access the net. (Or of course you could waste time ringing them up to check.)
Reliability on Netspace took a battering this week, when the service went down on Tuesday morning and stayed down all morning, coming back up after lunch. There was another, shorter outage in the evening, and again on Wednesday afternoon. This wouldn’t bug me normally very much, but I was working from home on Tuesday, and had a bunch of stuff to get done.
I ended up getting a “tethered” connection via my mobile phone. Surprisingly easy with the N95, using Nokia PC Suite, though it drained the battery pretty fast. I don’t have any kind of data plan on the phone, so it could get quite expensive if done on a regular basis, but the connection was rock solid, and fast.
So anyway I’m ISP shopping.
The two that were recommended by the most people: iiNet and Internode.
Internode get a good rap from a lot of people, though it looks like they can’t give me ADSL2+, only ADSL1 or “Fast ADSL”. A speed upgrade would end up costing me a fair bit more than I’m paying now.
In contrast, with iiNet I may end up paying just marginally more, but for more bandwidth and a much faster connection:
| ISP | Current: Netspace ADSL1: 1500k/256kbps |
iiNet ADSL2+: Up to 24000kbps |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | 30 Gb (15 peak+15 off-peak) $59.95/month Shaped. Off-peak is midnight-7am |
60 Gb (30 peak+30 off-peak) $49.95 Shaped. Off-peak is 2am-8am |
| Pros | Pretty reliable in the past | Network status publicly available Cool advertising Free content including ABC iView They’re fighting the good fight |
| Cons | Not reliable this week Status page hidden behind logon |
Dunno. Anyone know? |
| Phone | Telstra Homeline Budget | Phone 1 |
| Cost | $21.95/month Unlisted number $2.93/month Caller ID $6/month |
$29.95/month Unlisted number $2.93/month Caller ID $6/month |
| Call cost | Local 30 cents | Local 20 cents |
| Total inc 30 local calls/month |
$91.83 | $94.83 |
I haven’t looked at setup costs (including a new modem), cancellation fees, or costs of non-local calls, since I hardly ever make any on my home phone.
What’s been stopping me? Inertia, until this week. And perhaps fear of losing my connection for a few days.
I know this is like asking everybody what car is best, but has anybody got any comments? Any drawbacks to this plan?
Any other contenders who have fast ADSL/2+ in Bentleigh?
(Whirlpool says other companies with ADSL2+ DSLAMs installed at the Bentleigh exchange are Primus, TPG and Telstra. I notice Highway1 uses iiNet’s DSLAM; once upon a time circa 1996, they kindly hosted Toxic Custard.)
Update: Clarification thanks to Twitter people: Internode’s “Fast ADSL” is in fact up to ADSL2+ speeds, re-selling access from Telstra. So it would be just as fast as iiNet’s ADSL2+, but is more expensive, about double the price.
Update Mon 8/2/2010: I certainly can’t complain that Netspace ignore their customers’ concerns — they’ve been in touch to discuss things. Will post an update when the dust settles.
Finding an ATM
Having moved offices to Latrobe Street, I wanted to know where the nearest ATM is — that is, those of my preferred (no fee) banks, St George or Westpac.
The St George ATM/Branch locator will only show five results — including Westpac ATMs.
Searching postcode 3000, it shows me those closest to the the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, none of which are west of Queen Street. I know of at least one ATM on William Street near Bourke Street, but even when dragging the map around, it won’t show any others.
The Westpac site seems a little better, but doesn’t appear to show St George ATMs, only Westpac ones.
I’ve sent some feedback to the St George people. Will be interested to see how/if/when they fix it.
Update lunchtime: The Commonwealth Bank locator has similar issues if you just enter a postcode, only showing the 5 closest. But it does have the option of entering a full address, but if you don’t spell La Trobe with a space, it (and others) assume it’s Little Latrobe Street, thus showing me ATMs several blocks away instead.
The ANZ one shows about 15, none nearby. If you search by street name, like Commonwealth, you have to put the space in La Trobe, otherwise it has real problems.
The NAB one seems to show all results, but in pages of 5 per page, and with no combined map, which is hopelessly unuseable. (Imagine that, in 2010!) It allows me to enter a full address, but it has the same problems with La Trobe as the Commonwealth does.
Tags: ATMs, banks, maps
4 comments
Searching for Google
Google has announced (somewhat early, and amongst other things) the top Australian searches of 2009.
Most popular searches of 2009
YouTube
Hotmail
eBay
MySpace
Yahoo
Gmail
Bebo
Seek
So plenty of people search for Google in Google, despite the idiocy in doing so, and more significantly, the inherent dangers:
Tags: Google, Internet, IT Crowd, search engines
9 comments
A new tool for spying on the neighbours
Yesterday’s great website discovery: nearmap.com, which shows high resolution (and recent) satellite pictures of Melbourne and other places — a leapfrog over anything currently on Google Maps.
And I discovered that Ormond station has its official three-letter code, OMD, written on the top of it. How odd; I wonder why?
Alas, Frankston doesn’t, and I haven’t found any others so far.
Tags: nearmap.com, Ormond
11 comments
No, I won’t
See here’s the thing, Mr Facebook.
Just because someone I know on your fine service has managed to resist the temptation to add 300 “friends” (most of whom in reality he barely knows) who can bombard him with requests to play Mafia Wars and Farmville and endless pointless quizzes, doesn’t mean you can rope me into suggesting people to him.
If he feels he has the time to throw away so that he keep his eyeballs staring at your web site for hours on end, so you can serve him irritating and irrelevant adverts, I’m sure he’ll find people to add himself.
If on the other hand he’s managed to limit his Facebook addiction, and “only has 18 friends on Facebook”, then good for him. I’m not going to mess that up.
Tags: Facebook
12 comments
Toxic Custard?
When you throw two random words together, the likelihood of someone coming up with the same combination is, I think, fairly low.
A great way to think up a dot com name, I reckon.
Which is why I did a double-take when I saw this:
(Originally here, but now only visible in the Google cache.)
What it means, and if it has a link to the Toxic Custard web site and email list that I started in 1990, I really don’t know.
There’s more of the Rourke Van Dal’s work here and here (quite Banksyesque), and on his Myspace page.
Regards or Cheers?
Lifehacker on signing-off emails: The Yanks might think “Cheers” is too “mock-Brit”, but Australians are comfortable with it.
Personally I use Cheers on most. Regards on formal stuff. Or nothing when I’m talking to a regular correspondent and am in a hurry and/or on a mobile.
An older Lifehacker article noted “Best” was awkward. I hate “Best”. What does it even mean? Best what? Maybe in American English it has some inherent meaning, but to me just reads like it means “Best regards” but that the sender is too damn lazy to type “regards”… in which case it’s not really best, is it.
And starting off emails? I often say “Hi X,”. Some others say just “X,” then go on with the message, which I think sounds a little curt, but I guess it isn’t, as plenty of people, even those I know well and get along with famously, use it.
Tags: email
11 comments
Some silly things
A fire in Springvale, to which the CFA responds. C’mon, Springvale. What is this, 1960? East of Westall Road isn’t paddocks anymore. Surely it’s time to re-draw the MFB/CFA boundaries?
The metro/country taxi boundaries are similar, aren’t they? Time for an update.
Odd. I found a quarterly magazine that retails for $7, but is $44 per year by subscription?!
What’s with those fake Tintin t-shirts? “Tintin in Vietnam”? They’re not even taking the mickey out of the characters, they’re just making stuff up. Why?
Finally… if you get the opportunity to speak to the world, don’t waste it. Use your canvas wisely. Aim to impart great knowledge. Communicate your ideas to make society better. Say something meaningful.
