What are peoples opinions on Sky cable broadband as i have had enough of AOL and gone for the pro cable option with upto 70gig speed,was it a wise option or not as i wanted to try and keep everything under one package.Service reliability is suppposed to be as is customer support.

Any opinions please !!

Thanks

Mega,

I've been a Sky broadband user for the last 7 or 8 years, albeit I don't yet use their cable broadband. Whatever people might think of Murdoch as a person, he has a fantastic knack of producing great in-demand products at exactly the right price!

Sky customer support is quite good, but they do have a very irritating tiered call centre system whereby you start off with someone in the Philippines who gets you to go through all the basic routines of unplugging everything before elevating you to the next level of customer support. Once you reach support level 4 after 48 hours you get to speak to a Geordie who you can understand less than the first person you spoke to in Manilla! It's therefore a good idea to ask for the direct dial number for the top level of support if/when you get to speak to them.

The most annoying thing about Sky broadband is that their routers use their own firmware which hides the account username and password from customers. I assume they do the same with cable broadband? If your router goes a bit dickey it becomes a problem as they then expect you to wait without broadband until they send their own replacement router. It also means that you are stuck using the crappy Sky router.

Fortunately, there are pages on the various unofficial Sky forums which tell you how to hack the username and password out of a Sky router, so I suggest you do that asap after installation and keep it safe somewhere in case you ever need it or want to upgrade to a better router.

@Hils,thanks for your input,advice regarding sky customer services,they have just bought out a brand new modem router in the last 2 weeks so it should be even more reliable and a better wifi facility.They wont be able to add the new cable modem for another 10 days but it will be much more reliable than what i currently have i wish i had never changed away from Virgin as a dedicated cable modem is so much more reliable than copper wire broadband.

I dont regret changing to Sky as the current AOL broadbank is getting beyond a joke and keeps dropping a signal and the service is not the best.

Mega - are you sure its not 'operator error' :-)

I've been with AOL (mainly due to lethargy) for about 17 years without many problems.

Mr skinny sir,i beat you as i have been with AOL for 18 years :o) but since the early days of NTL cable have mainly used cable as the carrier and AOL as the email platform but the wife like using AOL so i have kept it.But about 2 years back i went over to solely AOL broadband and the 1st time of using adsl rather than cable and it was a drastic mistake as cable wins hands down all the time.

I cannot wait to get back on a cable modem again and get some real reliable speed and service back again,when i spoke to AOL customer support the 1st thing they mentioned it was problems with the line and not 'operator error' :-) well thats what i think he said as he was speaking to me from down town Bombay and we have have had cross lines :-))

:-)

Being a " technoprat", but a realist , ref. the ongoing MAM Monday morning L2 failures here is a fable.

Easyjet flight ten minutes before landing----

"This is the captain, we have only one minute of fuel left, its not our fault its our supplier who let us down".

Howls of fear and consternation.

HOWEVER

"This is your captain again, we have however a PlanB-it`s called an Emergency Tank"

Loud applause and relief!

Anyone else using Mac OSX 10.8.2 and the portfolio area showing an error:

ClassNotFoundException
"com.deltastream.applet.stock.StockApplet.class"

I have the latest Java from java.com and it was working until about an hour ago.

See 'managed bugs' thread. Streaming is down so Java stalling on all systems, not just your MAC.

Thanks Harrycat.

OK, my head is about to explode. I have a PC with Windows 7 home premium 64-bit. Java has stopped working in all browsers: Mozilla, IE, Chrome, and Safari. I need it for Money AM stockwatch amongst other things. I'd made no changes to the PC (that I am aware of). I've checked for updates etc. Uninstalled, reinstalled java. Checked that java was enabled in all browsers. Turned off McAfee live scan. Still doesn't work. Any ideas? Thanks. Dave

@bigwavedave its not your pc or java that is causing the problems its MoneyAM that is causing the problems take a look at this thread http://www.moneyam.com/TradersRoom/posts.php?page=1&tid=12563 and check all of todays posts that will explain it all.

Dell are quick of the mark - their Specs include Windows 8 Pro 64bit, as of today - Windows® 7 Professional (64 BIT) is a no cost option.

Aye MAM fecked all my settings up too, turning the modem off for twenty minutes was the only answer.

maga bucks - thank you. I don't have access to that thread but I'm pleased to see that my stockwatch is working again this morning so I assume the Money AM techies have done a fix. My brain is now cooling down :-)

bigwavedave - its available on both boards, here :- Managed Bugs thread

skinny - thanks for that. I will remember to check that thread in future. I must stop blaming myself when something goes wrong!! haha.

Doing a bit of browsing when this error message appeared:

Your server is running PHP version 4.4.9 but WordPress 3.3.1 requires at least 5.2.4.

Can anyone translate that into understandable English please?

WordPress is popular blogging software that powers many websites. PHP is a server-side scripting language used to dynamically build web pages. WordPress uses PHP to deliver its content.

It's my guess that you were trying to visit a blog and the webmaster had tried updating to the latest version of WP, only to find that his webhosts were still running PHP4 on the server.

Thanks for that Hilary. I sort of understand. I was actually seeking a list of local IFAs so it was quite easy to look elsewhere.