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Fibre to cabinet broadband


grinner
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I just wonder in a few years from now when the roll out of broadband has been completed and the evaluation of the benifits from it are completed,if the findings will be as complimentary as many would like to imply.

 

The cost of useing computers is definately getting more and more expensive,service providers,printer ink,decent virus protection,not to mention the many "sites" that require costly suscriptions.ect,ect.

 

Of course those who provide those web sites have to make money from it,but advertiseing in my opinion is now getting out of hand and subscriptions to favorite web sites more expensive. 

 

So who will be the winners the service providers or the users .Hopefully both but i wonder.

 

So I tend to agree a little with Colin. 

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You are right Urabug however this is how communications are moving and if we don't move with them we will be left behind. Big companies very rarely now have meetings or presentations or training in person now due to high costs getting everyone to the same place. The need to see who you are talking to seems for business to be the over riding factor. I am employed by a national company and we have a group meeting once a week I take part by phone everyone else is on video I am not saying that is the best way to go but it is the way its going. Even down south now solicitor client visits in prison are done by video link, court appearances are done at procedural diets by video link.

 

Newspapers are online the list goes on and on. The biggest thing of late is plugging yourself into a machine and connecting to a doctor when you are unwell its all a bit mad

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The cost of useing computers is definately getting more and more expensive,service providers,printer ink,decent virus protection,not to mention the many "sites" that require costly suscriptions.ect,ect.

What?! 

 

Computers are cheaper than they've ever been. If all you're doing is browsing the internet and doing basic word processing, you can get a Chromebook laptop for comfortably under £200. If you need a high end performance machine it'll cost a fraction of what it would have even ten years ago.

 

Broadband is getting cheaper all the time, albeit with faster speeds meaning more expensive options are available for those who want them.

 

You can get very powerful virus protection completely free (and I mean legal options, rather than easily accessed pirated copies if you are so inclined).

 

Subscription sites are not a necessity - if you want them though the choice is there, and often they are cheaper than traditional means (e.g. Netflix is far, far cheaper than a subscription to Sky). 

 

Yes, printer ink is still a rip off, but with tablets and laptops getting cheaper every day the need for reams and reams of paper is constantly reducing. Hand anybody under 30 a print out and they'll probably wonder why you've wasted paper on it. 

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Yes hjasga hardware is cheap enough, and so is some very good software,but in my experience more and more adverts are swamping the internet and the only way to get rid of them is to pay.

 

I have Vista on one of my computers and I am being promped to upgrade to windows 10, but when I try to, get told that this is not possible from xp or vista .Only option is to buy windows 10 --£80.

 

I also have excel,word and one note updateing to 10 will probably mean I will lose this.

 

Also like a game of cards,in windows 10 they are still available but you have to pay or put up with adverts popping up.

 

I know openoffice is free and have to admit it is very good.

 

All in all,not sure I could totally agree with you.

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Yes hjasga hardware is cheap enough, and so is some very good software,but in my experience more and more adverts are swamping the internet and the only way to get rid of them is to pay.

 

I have Vista on one of my computers and I am being promped to upgrade to windows 10, but when I try to, get told that this is not possible from xp or vista .Only option is to buy windows 10 --£80.

 

I also have excel,word and one note updateing to 10 will probably mean I will lose this.

 

Also like a game of cards,in windows 10 they are still available but you have to pay or put up with adverts popping up.

 

I know openoffice is free and have to admit it is very good.

 

All in all,not sure I could totally agree with you.

 

Adverts are a means of paying for the hard work that goes in to providing web content. If you want content produced for free there's plenty out there. Do you complain about adverts in print newspapers or on television? How do you suggest media companies fund their work otherwise? Given you're also seemingly opposed to subscriptions I'm not sure what you're suggesting, other than that people should work for nothing for your benefit. 

 

If you haven't upgraded since Vista then it's hardly a surprise you should have to pay. Again, this is a simple result of a lot of work going into these things. If you don't want to do that, there are open source alternatives. You could install Ubuntu, a free open source operating system, if paying is really a big burden. I expect the convenience of Windows makes it worth the outlay though. 

 

Upgrading to Windows 10 shouldn't necessarily mean you lose your Office programs. If you've lost record of your product key you may, but the same would stand if you'd lost an old book or video or vinyl. There are plenty of free alternatives - not just Open Office - and they are increasingly cross compatible. Personally I use Google Drive, which I find far superior to Microsoft Office for what I need. 

 

What sort of card games do you mean there? Solitaire, Hearts, poker? I'm almost certain there will be free alternatives out there somewhere but hard to suggest anything without knowing exactly. 

Edited by hjasga
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Also, whilst it may be on dubious grounds ethically, it is entirely illegal to block internet ads. There are various means to do that and a few options that do not require advanced IT knowledge to put in place. Some providers are beginning to get wise to it and block users who block ads, but those are still few and far between. 

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A £200 chromebook wouldn't cope with my work.  A high spec laptop back in 2002 bought with full version of Office Professional was around £1,500.  Now, the same laptop struggles.  Five years ago, bought an all-in-one, no need to buy Office as just loaded the version bought in 2002 because back then, the licence of it covered you for more than one machine.  This year, replaced the all-in-one with similar model so got obviously a recent version of Windows and got a newer version of Office.  The cost of both PCs very close as were the specs, only about £50 in it, plus going back even further, the PC bought in the late 1990s was around the same price range - £500 to £700.  Laptops have come down in price significantly but I wouldn't say like-for-like PCs have in the mid range.

 

Price of Office Professional was around £480 mark, and even now if you don't buy Office at the same time you buy a new PC it costs more.  However, you have to hunt to get Office (and you just get a key now as opposed to getting a CD and key), the licence is only for one machine (as opposed to 3 or up to 5 like the old days) and they want you to take out a yearly subscription to Office365 instead.  The last time I used it, OpenOffice just couldn't cope with tables and columns.

 

There's also tablets and iPads now, and hybrid laptops whereas before there wasn't.

 

Speed isn't a huge factor but reliability of connection is.  When using TeamViewer or Dropbox or the like, it's no fun when something takes 3 hours to transfer simply because there's a broadband fault outside Inverness.  Uploading and/or editing a document on the Microsoft Drive isn't fun unless you have from Windows 7 upwards. Being logged onto the file server in London isn't fun when the entire internet connection goes down either, and again if there's a bottleneck waiting for your cursor to move on the Word document on the London server isn't fun.

 

Printer:  The old workhorse HP Laser bought back in 2002.  Was a pain when Win 7 came out and the only driver which worked was the one it said wouldn't, wasn't such a pain on Win 8.1 and for TeamViewer network printing, it just thinks it is a different machine but it works.  Cost back then?  £99 from Staples.  Cost for a similar model now?  £89.  Laser toner is cheaper than ink cartridges.  Will upgrade later this year to Win 10 so will be interesting to see if I get the old beast to work but no doubt will be mimicking another laser printer.  If I felt so inclined, colour laser printers have dropped significantly in price.

 

I haven't subscribed to the superduper all allegedly singing and dancing Infinity because why should I pay to get a speed others elsewhere in the UK are paying for the same as what I'm paying now?  Besides, there's been several complaints about the reliability of it too.  It's bad enough when the kids get in from school and the speed most definitely drops.  I average a speed of around 4.5 to 6.5, right now it's 5.87.  If it drops below 3, I can't work.

 

Fax line:  who needs one now?  Not really the call any more for a fax line given you can scan and PDF a document.  That's another thing, PDF packages now cheaper than they were years ago.

 

So reliability and consistency at the moment is more important to me.  The extra money to BT just simply isn't worth it.  It's a balancing act and given BT get around £70 a month before I've even picked up the phone, as a business user I'm not inclined to give them any more for what some have reported as an unreliable service.  If anything has gone up in cost, it's the BT bill.

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The main thing is that all this technology becomes available to all and remains at an affordable price for all whether it be for buisness,pleasure or both.

 

No use having a Rolls Royce if you cannot afford the fuel.

 

With the economic state at the moment this could become a major problem.

Edited by Urabug
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Well, to be honest if it's a grant scheme and the community has put a lot of work into it then fair play to them. I am, I admit, back tracking a little. It's just that, with so many folk being made redundant on mainline Shetland, the specter of more local government cuts looming over us for the next 3 years and the apparent increase in folks having to use food banks, £250000 on super-fast broadband provision for a remote island of 55 folk seemed a bit odd on the face of it.  

Edited by Horns 'O' Da Geo
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  • 1 year later...

Not all that many years ago I like many others had to join lengthy queues to use payphones in the airports,at the railway stations wherever. Such was the demand for these payphones that great pressure was put on the Post Office/BT to provide more,then along came privatization and competition, Mercury had payphones all over the place.

 

And then came the mobile phone, the result of that one hardly ever sees a payphone being used nowadays and of course Mercury as far as I know no longer exists.

 

Now that technology has progressed even further to 4G AND 5G mobiles giving folk good access to the internet, and mobile coverage getting better all the time this raises a few issues.

 

 

1-      Will clients still want to use the conventional land lines or will many decide to use mobile technology only

 

2-      Will clients continue to afford to contribute to both land lines and mobile.  I know some contracts do this.

 

3-      Is this a valid reason conventional telephone providers might be a little hesitant in upgrading their landlines in case they end up like the payphones no longer required. 

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