I'm A 56k Ntl User

[hypoluxa3k]

i'm thinking of getting 150k at £18 a month

or

600k for £25 monthly

i'd like to know if 150k is drastically different, how long would a 5 min song take to download?

decisions, decisions....

[Illuminati]

It mainly depends on what you're d/ling (i.e. sources, etc) but for a pure download (i.e. a download from a site), 5 minutes would roughly equal 15-20MB. As most songs are around the 6-8MB mark, it'd take about 3 minutes to d/l

Depending on how sources you d/l from, you can get faster or slower than that.

Hope that helps (Just remember to get a firewall if you do go broadband )

[hypoluxa3k]

don't you mean most songs are 4-6mb ?

anyway, getting a firewall, what is it and how do i get it?

[Adster]

hmmm wish it was easy for me jsut to change from 56k to broadband or I for geography reasons I can't

but what ive heard is once you go from 56k to broadband thres no going back!

[Illuminati]

Originally posted by hypoluxa3k@18 July 2003 - 11:12

don't you mean most songs are 4-6mb ? 

No - Most songs varying in size because of their bit rate; the quality of the sound. Most 128k songs (most common bit rate on FT) are around 5MB, but 192s (the minimum bit rate where discrepancies are undistinguishable) are up to 10MB and above. That size range I gave was an average.

anyway, getting a firewall, what is it and how do i get it?

A firewall controls the internet activity through your connection, intending to protect you from hackers, (some) trojans, etc.

I'd recommend you get ZoneAlarm Pro 4; it monitors activity in (hackers) & out (trojans), closes all your ports to stealth mode (hence you don't become part of a DOS attack ) uses ad blocking and is relatively easy to use. You should know where to get it from already

[DarthInsinuate]

i would go for the full on 600k package - 150k is just double modem speed, not much of a boost considering how slow 56k is

two good sites, with decent forums
ispreview
www.adslguide.org.uk

[j4y3m]

600k you can get stuff like 15x faster than 56k if you use tcp optimizer

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by hypoluxa3k@18 July 2003 - 02:52
i'm thinking of getting 150k at £18 a month

or

600k for £25 monthly

i'd like to know if 150k is drastically different, how long would a 5 min song take to download?

decisions, decisions....

25.00 EUR = 28.1675 USD
For 600k, I don't know what that is. But if it is 100.0kb/s (with 15.0kb/s upload) then that is a good price. Go for it.

Of course you should also get unlimited bandwidth, an e-mail account and atleast 10MB of web space.

[Ron]

I think he was talking pounds Spindulik, not Euros.
Anyway, in Belgium, we get 3.3 Mbs down, and 128Kb up for about €40/month, and even that doesn't seem fast enough sometimes.

[Skillian]

Get the 150K service and see how you get on. The good thing about NTL is you can ring up and upgrade to the 600K service instantly (like as soon as you hang up the phone). You can also cancel it whenever you want.

My bet though is that you won't be able to give up the 600K service once you've tried it.