The Three-Minute Syndrome

yes! although if electric storms are about I just give up. otherwise few problems. I am still toying with changing my server. it's now down to bloody america on line (aol) or btinternet. cable is the best (ntl) but means too much hassle for me and the phone system I have here. I have conflicting reports though. some say aol is great. others says it's @!#$. true it does overwrite everything on your pc and meddles with the directories and I have heard that it is nigh on impossible to delete. bt gets slagged off by most but some say it's good. the which report says aol is best. internet magazine says it's crap. help.

ps. is this the fastest ever thread hijack?

Yeeeeeeees!! This happens to me a lot! My hard drive had taken a battering for nothing it seems!

Connectus interruptus can be caused by many things. This could be a three-pipe problem for Sherlocke. Check your own computer's settings first, including the settings of your brower. If that's ok (say at 20 minutes or more), then the problem is either your ISP, the abctales server (unlikely in my opinion but possible), random violence on the BT phone lines, electrical storms, rain, etc. But, three minutes is silly. Something is clearly wrong somewhere. I use BT Anytime and have never had this problem. Very occasioinally I will have a bad connection that cuts me off prematurely, but I just dial back and it is usually better. You might be connected through a faulty or very old modem at your ISP, for example. Call back and you will probably get a different modem on their end.

Ah, the joys of the modem and a cable... ps. Heard from several sources that AOL are crap. Isn't BT the only ISP in the UK which offers cable? Karl: As long as that, eh?

I've never used aol, but given the BT Anytime offer, I don't see any reason to use anything else. In the U.S., aol offers some proprietary content which some people find useful, but they don't have a good reputation technically even there. I would never use them here. BTW, AOL was calle "A O Hell" for a long time, and for a good reason.

Put Karl's minute and a half together with Linsi's HARD DRIVE and you will surely get a good connection. AJ

I hear that aol is considerably better nowadays justin. they use file compression technology to speed up page downloads. this affects image quality apparently but unless you need pro quality images it does not matter. I quite fancied going with bt until I heard that speed can be a problem and the connection can drop quite often. I dunno. I'll ask the man in the white coat. he is still there you know. looking cyclops eye not blinking

My BT connection does konk out once in a while, but it's no worse than other methods I've tried. I used to use netcomuk. No better plus much more expensive. I also used virgin.net for a while. No better and more expensive (meter charges) plus the password authorization routine at virgin.net konked out every Friday without fail and stayed like that most of the weekend, just when everyone wants to use it the most. Still, whatever works.

Have only just bought a PC, so I have experience of only one ISP. Yes, it sometimes cuts off after around two-three minutes, usually if I'm checking my mail on Yahoo - no idea why, but it does. However, Nutshell is a real Jekyll and Hyde operation.. it worked damn-near perfectly for a month, went absolutely haywire for a week or so, but now it's back to normal. I've got my fingers crossed.. especially as we paid three months in advance. That way, it costs £9.99 a month unlimited access. It's fast, too, so if it doesn't go doolally again I'd recommend it.