Posts by Mark Gilbert

Apple confirms 128GB iPad. A hundred bucks for an extra 64GB

It is amusing how quickly the negative comments roll in as soon as Apple announce a new model of anything.

To agree with previous posters, if you read this site you are most likely not the target market for this device. So read The Reg review, enjoy the over excited hate filled comments, then for a more objective view, read AnandTech's review http://www.anandtech.com/show/6472/ipad-4-late-2012-review

Sex offenders need internet access, judge rules

Re: What?

I think the judge meant that the guy would die while still being subject to the order, not die due to being subject to the order.

Greenpeace spies soot lining in cloud data centers

If coal is too dirty

let's go nuclear

BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers

BT Aren't That Bad

I use BT for my phone line, BT are my ISP and I have BT Vision, and I have found the service for all three has been fine. I also make it clear from the outset I work for one of the IT services arms of BT, but have nothing to do with the phone or broadband side of things.

Getting my line installed was trouble free. Same goes for the broadband, got it installed ok, had some issues with connection speeds at first where the line would not sync at anything above about 1200Kbps. Now I understand that dealing with a helpdesk in a foreign place can be a bit frustrating at times, but to fix my issue with the broadband service I simply explained what diagnostic process I had been through, at which point they simply said give them 24 hours at their end then call back, which I did and then they said it was most likely a line fault and they would book an engineer visit. A quick visit from a nice Openreach man fixed all that and now my modem syncs at 8128Kbps.

I haven't really noticed any throttling of torrents but as far as I'm concerned they're a background service. They can be left rolling along at whatever speed. Of course I've noticed that outside peak hours the download speeds increase but that's fine by me. I do a fair bit of online gaming during peak hours and I know I wouldn't want my ping times affected by torrents from every machine on the network.

BT Vision does what it says on the box, no issues there.

As for laying fibre, that's a project that would cost billions of pounds which Ofcom would then allow every other ISP to make money off. So please tell me why should BT, who are a business and have shareholders to answer to and staff to pay invest the money required for their competitors to then reap the benefits? Virgin can afford to do it to an extent as they are not forced to allow other ISPs to use their network, but they only do it in areas where they deem it financially beneficial to them, because at the end of the day they too have shareholders to answer to.

A lot of people knock BT, but as far as I can see they do a good job considering the circumstances they have to operate under.

Mmm, I can already feel the warmth from the flames.