COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

Ian, I am definitely not arguing with you or criticising you. All I can do is report what happens and as David says, the site was miserably slow. I am grateful for what you do for us.
Thanks for that Kev, I have done it but no appreciable difference, still lightning fast.

[Stanley]

I think I very nearly got scammed yesterday with what they call the Makita scam. I shame to say it but I was falling for it until Firefox stepped in and slapped my wrist. These frauds are so realistic!
I forgot the Golden Rule, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
I admit to being human......

[Tizer]

Good news for a change...
`One of world's biggest botnets taken down, US says' LINK

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Peter! Definitely good news. I keep wondering what the affects of AI will be on both the ability to hack other computers and the investigations into the hackers. I suppose we will never know.
All an old bloke like me can do is keep his head down!

[Tripps]

I bit the bullet and gave up my land line phone yesterday. I don't use it a lot - the nuisance calls from robots were annoying me, and they will all be phased out by the end of next year anyway. Takes effect next Wednesday.

I stayed with Plusnet and my monthly payment ( now for broadband only) is reduced from £45 to £27. I've had to reluctantly commit to a two year contract though, but the price seems compettive at the moment. The service remains the same - 'fibre to cabinet' .

County Broadband and Gigaclear will be disappointed, but 'better the devil you know', and the service is relaible and fast enough for me. .

[Stanley]

I killed my land line when I went to full fibre David. I haven't missed it at all. Like you the only calls I was getting were ones I could well do without.

[Tizer]

I stayed with Plusnet....County Broadband and Gigaclear will be disappointed, but 'better the devil you know', and the service is reliable and fast enough for me. .

The salesman from Jurassic Fibre came to our door recently to `offer us a special deal' for their fast service. We got talking and I said we'd had excellent service from Plusnet for about 20 years now and hardly ever had the service go down so I wouldn't be changing. I said how the computer and software people I'd worked alongside in the past had all used Plusnet. He stopped trying to persuade me and we got talking. He had been a computer engineer before taking up a sales job and and he too rated Plusnet highly!

[Tripps]

Don't forget that Plusnet are part of BT now, and they ceased their mobile phone service recently, and dumped me without a second thought. They do have a good customer service though, which was in Sheffield, but now (and they tell you when you ring them) is in Leeds. They are aware of the backlash against Indian call centres. Loyalty to a company is probably misplaced now - think of property and vehicle insurance.

[Stanley]

"Loyalty to a company is probably misplaced now "

That is undoubtedly true. I am sure that at one time it counted for something but now it means nothing.
The only advantage I see now to what we used to call loyalty is that there is less chance of a mistake in the computer's dealings with your account if there are no changes.
(Mind you.... my experiences with British Gas over the last three years suggest that there may be a flaw in my thinking..... )