Neal McDermott wrote:
Hi, All,
I have just relocated from California to Ashford, Kent, in the UK. The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.
Can anyone recommend an reliable, affordable ISP in this area that allows linux connections?
Thanks.
Neal McDermott
I'm also a California expatriate living in Hertfordshire. I went through a lengthy process and selected breathepro.com. One of my friends swears by dial.pipex.com. If you are in an area with cable TV, I would consider NTL. Broadband Internet penetration is not as pervasive as in Silicon Valley and forget any semblance of "caring" customer care. I've gotten irritated when they start telling me to "open Outlook express and ...." You are basically on your own when it comes to debugging connectivity and not using Windows. Maybe if I had researched some more I would have found an ISP whose tech support could manage non-Windows but I was also in need to connect quickly. I made my choice based on availability, average download speed and price. There's a couple of magazines (whose names I forget since this was 5 months ago) that you can get at "proper" news/book vendors such as W H Smith that just rate and rant about internet ISP's. Note that BT is the same as PacBell with respect to line ownership and passing the buck when you do not chose them as the ISP and problems occur. I hear that BT is OK but there's no need for the OpenWorld stuff. If you are in this forum you just need the DIY connection package. I hope you brought your own broadband modem with you. All hardware costs at least 50% more in the UK. Even at dabs.com or dsl-warehouse.com Otherwise, the beer here is cheaper, plentiful varied and excellent. Cheers and have fun driving on the left.