Can anyone recommend a decent, reliable Broadband/Telephone supplier?
Alternatively a reliable, trustworthy free email provider of an uncomplicated system compatible with Thunderbird?

I'm currently with Virgin/NTL but have had a bellyfull of them making a total lash up of hiving their email off to Google Gmail.

There are still lots of ongoing problems for many users despite the migration having taken place about 2 or 3 weeks ago.

My big issue is that I don't trust Google in terms of security & privacy one iota, and that they seem to be trying to persuade people to use the webmail site rather than getting it via Thunderbird etc. Emails continue to sit on the server after delivery to the end user and I don't want to keep having to access the web site to delete old mail, and to check whether anything that should have come through has been flagged as spam and held back.

ChuffChuffChaser: Well, I can't help you when it comes to whether you should trust Google's Gmail or not, but I can tell you that you can configure Gmail to delete mail automatically from Google's servers after you've downloaded it to a POP client like Thunderbird. Specifically, you have options to keep it in the Gmail inbox, mark it as read, archive it, or delete it.

I don't know what the blessed Virgin have offered you in the transition, but what I've listed are standard Gmail options.

Also, Gmail's spam filter is reckoned to be one of the better ones.

MM

MM.
Do they actually delete it or block access?
mac

Tks MM. I don't know if the Virgin interface to Gmail allows files to be deleted automatically as I haven't, as yet, been able to find it, but it may be there somewhere but well hidden.

Gmail may well be fairly efficient & reliable but my innate paranoia doesn't allow me to trust Google. They've become too big and too ambitious in terms of what they do, allegedly for free.

Everytime I go in to VM mail I am exhorted to use the webmail rather than an alternative. Why do they want everyone to leave their email on the servers? They now provide users with 7.5gb of storage per account, which will accommodate a lot of messages.

Can't help suspecting that Google are likely to do some data mining to provide themselves with a larger income stream from advertisers.

I'm currently trying out www.inbox.com as a possible alternative to see if it serves my email needs. Their free account provides 5gb per account. I haven't entirely mastered to the link to Thunderbird yet, but when I do I might stay with them, & ditch Virgin completely for everything.
Alternatively it might be TalkTalk for phone & bb as my brother is quite happy with them.

Sky switched to Gmail a couple of years ago. Aside from one or two early teething problems, it's been fine and their spam filter is effective as MM says.

I would have thought that your own email client will control if or when emails are deleted on the server after retrieval and download. MS Outlook includes those options for sure.

I'm on TBird 2 & in server settings have "leave messages on server" unchecked, so once downloaded to my PC they shouldn't, in theory, be on the server afterwards.
On the old Virgin system this was how it worked, but now they still show up as being on the Virgin/Gmail server.

ChuffChuffChaser:

I'm unsure of how Virgin's gateway to Gmail works, but with regular Gmail the following works:

If you go to www.google.co.uk, you will see a menu item 'Gmail' in a horizontal list, top left. Click on that and it'll take you to a Gmail login screen. Enter your Gmail username (which will be your email address) and password.

This should log you in to your account and display your inbox (needless to say, this is the Gmail web interface). Top right, just beside your login name, you will see 'Settings'. Click on that.

In the middle of the horizontal menu you will see 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' - click on that. You will now be presented with all the options for mail forwarding and, in particular, under 'POP Download:' see option '2. When messages are accessed with POP' and you will see you can select 'delete Gmail's copy' in that dropdown.

Hope this helps.

MM

Can't log into Gmail direct. If I enter my existing email address (***.******@ntlworld.com). Also If I go to Google I have another address, ***.******@ntlworld.com.test-google-a.com which also does not allow me to access Gmail

CCC: I think I'm beginning to understand your frustration. Where did that wierd second email address come from?

Is it possible to link the IPhone by Bluetooth to say other Bluetooth items apart from only headphones like printers or to the pc as Apple restrict the use so that you have to through ITunes has any one got around this one please.

Thanks

I am not going to be able to follow up any answers until after the weekend, but can I pose the problem for consideration.

I have just bought one of these.

I intend to try to send images to a Samsung Q1 Ultra. Like this.

It is using the tablet version of XP

To get it to work I need to set up an 'ad-hoc' wifi network on the Q1 - and they recommend using one with WEP. Each time to configure one and try to get it to connect I get the messages " Please Wait while Windows connect to the xxx
network. Waiting for Network".

The support guys at Eye-Fi say " it means that your Windows system
is unable to connect to this network thus the card cannot see it as
available to connect. Please try to remove any security from the network
and try to connect to it with Windows first. At this stage windows
must be able to connect to this ad-hoc network. If it is unable to
do so, this has nothing to do with Eye-Fi card. Once Windows will
connect to the wireless network you will be able to connect Eye-Fi
card to it."

I have removed my firewalls and everything else I can think of.

Am I right in thinking that my Q1 can create an ad-hoc network in isolation? It actually needs to as the Eye-Fi card will be in a camera that gets turned on and off.

Apologies if I do not respond to any immediate replies - please do not take that as lack of interest, more a case of lack of time!!

Enjoy your sunny weekend, as Mrs TP and I intend to do.

EDIT. Since posting the above the Help Desk at Eye-Fi has suggested that I take a trial of Virtual Access Point.

TP

MM - No idea about that - I presume its something created by Virgin or Google for the purposes of their long and highly flawed migration.

CCC
if you log into your VM email account you will find the same settings available as described above for Google. The copies can be prevented but for some strange reason it retains copies of the deleted messages in "bin".
You are correct in saying that the option in the email client not to leave copies no longer works.
VM state that this move is a security improvement but I can't see how. There is no way I'm going to post personal messages via Google or any other web based system.

iiwarm - thank you. I will have a look at that, but I'm not comfortable with having to keep going to the bin to dump stuff, so I guess it will be another ISP, when I've decided which one.

Virgin did this swap in the name of "improvement & customer service", which translates from corporate double speak in to plain English as "Stuff you gits, we're doing this for our own benefit & profit".

Microsoft used to be the big target for mistrust, complaints and hacking etc, but Google far outstrips them in terms of being devious & intrusive etc.

If you think Google is bad, check out Facebook of late. At least Google isn't a free service that's still trying to work out how to monetize its service - it's always been earning money from its search/advertising activities.

However, you're right, they have almost displaced Microsoft in the Evil Empire contest. But in terms of control freakery, check out Apple - and they now have a bigger market cap than Microsoft.

MM - I had a Facebook account under a pseudonym with ludicrous personal details (mother - Queen Boudicca, father- Conan The Librarian, etc), for a short while for a specific purpose but have now dumped it.

To me Facebook and other similar sites, eg Twitter, Bebo etc are probably the most pointless and trivial things currently on the web, (I'm showing my age I think!). They'll probably fall apart sometime in the future when someone comes up with an idea that's perceived to be more "cool".

Actually, Twitter is the least pointless and most useful of the lot. It's also the most misunderstood. While it contains its share of pointless drivel, it is, in reality, a realtime news feed of short headlines and links. You select what you want receive.

For example, I follow BBC Radio4 Today, TechCrunch (hot tech news from Sili Valley), HMTreasury, Edmund Conway (economic correspondent of the Telegraph), John Lilly (CEO of Mozilla - the FireFox folks), Churchill Club (SIlicon Valley forum) and so on.

Can I copy the message I posted before the weekend to see if anyone is clued up about 'ad-hoc' wifi networks.


I have just bought one of these.

I intend to try to send images to a Samsung Q1 Ultra.
Like this.

It is using the tablet version of XP

To get it to work I need to set up an 'ad-hoc' wifi network on the Q1 - and they recommend using one with WEP. Each time to configure one and try to get it to connect I get the messages " Please Wait while Windows connect to the xxx
network. Waiting for Network".

The support guys at Eye-Fi say " it means that your Windows system
is unable to connect to this network thus the card cannot see it as
available to connect. Please try to remove any security from the network
and try to connect to it with Windows first. At this stage windows
must be able to connect to this ad-hoc network. If it is unable to
do so, this has nothing to do with Eye-Fi card. Once Windows will
connect to the wireless network you will be able to connect Eye-Fi
card to it."

I have removed my firewalls and everything else I can think of.


Since posting the above the Help Desk at Eye-Fi has suggested that I take a trial of Virtual Access Point. This I did and, to my annoyance, whilst it looks as if it will load on my Vista PC the same installation file flags up 'this file is corrupt' on the XP tablet. So I am no further on....

TP

I have a problem with my Dell Laptop running Win7

For some reason it is not detecting the battery. The system tray power icon says no battery detected. Device manager says the battery is working ok. I have tried reseating the battery but it still does not work.

Any ideas short of buying a new battery?

Jeff: Have you just upgraded to Win 7? And did this problem occur since the upgrade?

PS on edit: How old is the laptop and the battery?