2008-10-13 13:27:55

Hi everyone. This isn't about any games found out there, rather this is about broadband, service providers and how user friendly their CDs/software/setup files are. I'm now in UK and I find broadband much faster and much more reliable than in other places. I checked out broadband from different service providers and there's no doubt that services are good. However, some service providers provide setup files with graphical interfaces that are not friendly to screen readers thus forcing you to resort to less conventional means. I use JAWS and even with the JAWS cursor or the invisible cursor, I've had difficulty in the past. However, O2 solved all those problems.

I don't know if O2 had us in mind or not but in any case, you can bet that their setup files are screen reader friendly especially for those of us using JAWS 8 or higher. O2 also provide anti virus software but I don't think they have any control over how the interface of the anti virus software works or how screen friendly it is but going on what I've tried out, norton use to be the most screen reader friendly but not anymore. Now MCAfee has taken over that spot.

So anyone who's living in UK who wants to setup broadband with no sighted assistance, check out O2 and MCAfee for virus protection. If you can recommend anything from where you live, that'd help folks out to.

2008-10-13 14:23:55

If you want to set up broadband, speaking as a completely blind user in the UK myself, forget CDs entirely. The most completely user friendly way is to buy a Netgear router, personally I use one of the 834 family.

This will allow you to use broadband from most ADSL services, except those which force you to use their own equipment... and I'm not keen on that idea since they can remotely control those usually too and I don't trust it. They can also come with wireless networking built in, which is nothing short of excellent if you have a laptop or have other users in the house.

Set up is just too easy for words. Plug it in and wire up your computer, repair your LAN connection if needed. Then pull up Internet Explorer and hammer in the address "192.168.0.1". Once you've put in that IP address you need to enter username admin and password of password. Then just go through the web interface, it only really needs to know your country and broadband username/password. In the space of about a minute you have broadband, and have the option of setting up the router as a wireless access point.

Netgear stuff I find is the most accessible I've seen. They even have a help section in a separate frame that will come up in Jaws at the bottom of the window, complete with HTML headings you can use to jump to it with the H key. This section gives you a general description of the settings on the page you're on and what they're for. Just utterly without equal.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-10-13 16:14:05

Well, speaking as someone else using Dsl and living in the uk, Bt provided both their own equipment and their own setup Cd. The setup Cd was fine at cooperating with hal and din't involve graphics, and the equipment wasn't too difficult to plug in either.

the only real annoyence is that it automatically, ----- without any Cd prompting installed and ran a Yahoo brouser skin on Ie, which played merry hell with hal, and which, ---- unlike for example the google toolbar, you couldn't just uninstall.

luckily i was able to disable this in the control panel, but it took a phone call to a highly knolidgeable friend for me to know where and how to do that.

there was also a bunch of other random antivirus, chat, and web storage based services and programs that got installed with no prompting, but they were easily removable by usual means.

the nice bit though, is now the account is setup, any compute I plug in here is fine, so when my desktop exploded, it was simply necessary to plug my new desktop into the box.

wireless networking is also nice and very easy to setup indeed (much easier than I expected).

the only absolute irritation was that the password for the broardband wireless network is actually physically written on the box in print. i phoned Bt customer services and gave them some serious hassle about this, and finished up having the phone slammed down on me.

normally my response would be even more hassle, however I just wanted to get back on the internet at that point and as I had no desktop i only had one option. Luckily a friend of mine turned up who could read me the wireless password, ----- which i've sinse noted down.

while I agree there are areas the Bt setup could've been significantly improved,

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-10-13 17:19:33

Careful, almost all ISPs here have a "reasonable usage policy" in spite of advertising unlimited broadband. Quite often they also fail to specify what is "reasonable" uage. Thus in fact unlimited broadband is pretty rare.

As to wireless networking, using your own gear is another bonus there. You get to set the encryption key yourself, so you don't have to worry about reading it off the bottom of the box or whatever. I also think

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-10-13 22:39:48

Hmmm, i've not heard of vonage before to be honest, ----- and is that counting line wrentle and extra charges?

lots of companies I know advertize unlimited broardband and then charge you a hefty bit of line wrental or connection charge. With Bt it's at least a flat rate.


In terms of broardband limits, I've personally never discovered one, neither have I at my parents in nottingham where we have two desktop pc's, my brother's laptop, wii and ds, and my laptop whenever I'm there all going off the network.

while admittedly my parents don't download much, ----- my brother and i certainly do, especially with my brothers Wii ware updates, and yet we've stil not ever hit a limit.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-10-14 08:55:50

The people who hit the limits tend to be people who download vast amounts, as in downloading films. That's something like several gigabytes for one film. They would quite happily download dozens of gigabytes in a week. Most people, even with updates, are small fry with this. I've heard it said that something like 90% of the bandwidth of the provider is used by about 10% of the users.

As to vonage, it goes through your broadband connection so it doesn't incur line rental even though it does give you a UK number... which they also let you choose the area code for quite handily. I know you can get some packages, like from Tiscali which offer you free line rental. It would probably be well worth your time checking how much bandwidth you actually use, it's probably not nearly as much as you think and you might well be able to save something like a tenner a month. Software updates don't count for much usage these days.

Even my package with my ISP is

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.