shadowbox

taxi driver tells me it's vincent rd church. we're on steade rd , our house is filled with smoke, we can see the flames, it's massive

16mb down this morning

just got 1072 mb down, 741mb up. that's 1/20th of the advertised speed - heck it's 1/2 less than the speed of the lowest package. certainly not acceptable, although I believe Virgin's terms allow them to provide no service whatsoever and still bill you (someone on thinkbroadband sued them successfully over this, a judge ruled the terms unlawful) Mobile broadband will hopefully make cable and adsl obsolete - they reckon this will be the dominant broadband within two years.

speedtest.net is a good one. If you do ring support, make sure you ring when your connection is poor otherwise they refuse to help/can't help.

been having poor download speeds since December, kicks in around 3pm when the kiddies get home from school. I thought traffic management was supposed to stop lighter users like myself being affected by the greedy file sharers. Anyway, a few things to consider: - when you ring the premium rate support line, if the problem is clearly not your fault request a refund at the end of the call - you'll get it refunded off your next bill. - never, ever admit to using a wireless network as support will instantly blame your home network. Instead, insist you plug directly into the modem - Virgin's costs are negotiable. I rang them in January to complain that every evening I was getting 0.3 mb speeds on a 4mb connection and eventually was put through to sales who eventually agreed to upgrade me to a 20mb connection plus throw in the unlimited phone package, all for the same price I was currently paying (4mb service with just weekend free calls). Now I am getting around 14mb during the day and 2-3mb at night. The apparent reason for the evening slowdown is the sheffield network needs upgrading. This may be rubbish and a fob off - but basically I logged my complaint and have been promised a further £10 a month rebate until the slowdowns are remedied, although support suggest i wait until the problem is fixed before I try to claim. We'll see - I'll give it until April.

I also recommend Baby View, we had ours two years ago and it was great - my wife's currently 23 weeks pregnant, so are looking to book again. Last time we did it at 27 weeks, but this time we're going to wait a bit longer. I had a look at a few other local places online, but babyview is still far and away the cheapest. Our only gripe was we expected smoother motion on the video - normal video is around 24 frames a second, this is more like 1 frame a second. Not sure if that's just BabyView, or that's as far as the technology can go currently.