I had a bit of fun with a lady from Madrid the other week regarding words like fork. Spanish speakers find it hard to get their tongues around our dipthongs so the longish " or" was shortened to a "u" sound so it became a "garden f***".
Actually I have satellite broadband and I have tried 4G. Satellite suffers badly from latency. They work ok, unfortunately most of the time they don't due to precipitation and congestion.. I am a unified communications consultant ffs and I can't even work from home.
OK Ashby. You'd certainly know the problems and solutions you have better than anyone. Any idea how long it'll be before fibre optic comes down the road.? The Govt did have a mission to make sure everyone had access to it, to ensure fast broadband communication was available. The thing is, when.?
My BT goes in extreme rain and storms. Don't think I have cable availability yet; were right on the edge of our village.
That is the only good thing about living 2 miles from the town centre (I live in Poole officially but Bournemouth is a lot closer...I live near Bournemouth University which is in Poole ) I have full blown 200 meg Virgin Fibre and a nice 8 meg Backup ADSL BT line that my router fails over to automatically (told you I'm a geek) if Virgin goes down (there's an expression you don't see often!)
Impressive BUT... What does that 200 mbits per give you that say 50 wouldn't do. Actually, I know what it potentially does, but what do you use it for, if you don't mind me asking. I ask because, for the life of me, I can't see any need for more than 20-50 mbits for the single user. Then again, I'm not an online gamer, and there aren't 10 people in my house all requiring the internet at the same time. And I think I'm portrayed as a bit of a nerd on here too.
To be honest not a lot more actually.I don't online game (or offline for tha matter!), but do watch a lot of streamed films/US live TV. I also have been known to download the odd film or TV series - boy do they come down quick I went for the 200 mbit because I could . To be fair a few months ago my router (if you're a nerd check out the Draytek 2860!) failed over to the ADSL and I didn't notice for 4 days!
Yes, I know about Draytek routers. They are not without the odd issue, but can be very fast. As to downloading, yes, that is where the ultra high speed shows itself. Most people wouldn't see that in ordinary usage, but I bet you appreciate it. Care to estimate how long 1Gb of mp4 might take to download.?
I downloaded a 4 gig ISO in just under 4 mins the other day from Microsoft - The bottleneck is now always the website, rather than me. Also if wireless, have to make sure I'm on the 5ghz band on my Apple AirPort Extreme, I still manage to get 50 mbits on the normal 2.4ghz in the garden Sorry - far too geeky.
I dream of having just a reliable 10Mbit/s service with unlimited downloads but can't see that happening anytime quickly. Superfast Broadband we'll be on our 5th new manager by then, so about 10 years. I have a Meraki setup at home with theoretical 22Mbit/s satellite and I get 4Mbit/s with loads of latency as primary and back up with a whopping great 0.8Mbit/s ADSL. I like to download films but its not really worth thinking about it. Went to a Derbyshire Council meeting yesterday to raise the Superfast broadband profile and need for the local community and basically got fobbed off. Its not like I'm in the boondocks as well.
Nope fine by me to actually have someone explain fully. I think you make a good point about website bottleneck. A user with say 20 mbits may find that several websites bottleneck the speed. However, when you hit a webserver that clearly expects massive volumes of download activity, then 200 mbits just explodes with speed. 4Gb in 4 mins is still science fiction for 99% of users.
As a single user I have an ultra reliable 12 mbits. Hand on heart, I never have any problems whatsoever that I can't can't solve myself. When my previous provider sold their customers to Talk-Talk I had 3 weeks of a terrible changeover [it was supposed to take 20 minutes] with no internet or landline phone. Was I glad of my mobile phone's unlimited internet access back then. That was out of my control, but before and since that I've had almost zero problems. I can watch HD programmes online on two or three PCs [I've done the experiment] with no problems and be downloading something else. Outright downloading requires patience, but it gets through 99.9% of the time. 1Gb typically would take anywhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours, depending upon website. I have looked at higher speeds, but unless the deal is genuinely not going to cost me more than a couple more than I'm paying now I don't have a motivation for changing. I will look at Virgin again over the next few weeks though.
I get the Virgin XL package which is 100mb as part of a bundle with landline and their M TV package. This was the free one that they don't offer anymore but we got it when they did and it is basically freeview with the free HD channels. Costs me about £65 all in because with a Portuguese wife I have a few bolt ons to the phone deal that reduces international calls etc. Very rare I have any broadband problems and with 3 kids all on tablets plus a Smart TV, 2 laptops, 2 phones a playstation etc the wifi gets quite a hammering through the day.
Aside from the apps, in which Smart TV's are OKish, what's your experience of a Smart TV browsing the Internet.? I'm talking in terms of usability [slight shift of subject focus]. I've had several people ask me if I recommend Smart TV's and I did, but now I'm not so sure, for many users. I've frequently used what is considered to be one of the smartest of Smart TV's in a year old Samsung, with mouse and keyboard, and it has put me off frankly. For my personal use I have a 37" Samsung HDTV Stupid [for want of a better word] TV attached to a decent PC running Windows 10, with wireless mouse/keyboard/remote, and it is so much better than the Smart TV experience that there really is no comparison. The Stupid TV setup generally goes like lightning, and the Smart TV setup goes like it's stuck in treacle, and with a far better speed of internet than I have.
Personally there are much better devices for browsing than the smart TV, but for streaming media i.e. Netflix they are ideal if you want a one box solution
I only use my laptop for the internet because it is the best thing to use. I don't use the phone because the screen is too small and the "keys" too small. I don't use the TV for it either. I am pretty old school and I tend to think "Why use a phone, tablet or TV when I have a laptop over there that is faster and better for that sort of thing." My wife uses it. I have a Samsung Smart TV and it has a remote that you point and click like a wand. For someone without a PC then the web browsing is fine for normal browsing. Any illegal stream sites or movies then no but for someone that doesn't have a laptop then it is fine. What I do like about the smart TV is the wifi which means I can just cast video from my laptop HD on to the TV wirelessly. Not for streaming video, just ones on my HD. The other good thing is the youtube app and the iplayer app. The family use it for everything. I only use it if there isn't a better option. The speed is OK but it isn't anywhere near my laptop which loads a full page within 2 or 3 seconds. I do watch my streamed games on the TV but from the laptop with a HDMI connecting them so the laptop is doing the work with the TV as a monitor like you do with your "stupid" TV. OVerall yeah the smart TV is good and for a 48" LED it is worth the £550 I paid for it 18 months ago (probably about £400 now with the way tech prices go) It gets used for everything by us all and I tend to have it on in the background with the laptop (surfing the net) on my lap. I don't watch much TV.
