I do at times stop and think about how far technology has come on in the last 10 years or so. Now we’re in 2010, being able to receive up to the minute news and information via mobile handsets seems perfectly normal, but certainly wasn’t the case with me using one of my old Nokia’s from 2000!

I remember when I had my first WAP enabled phone; it was desperately slow, but it kind of worked. It was I guess the Teletext equivalent for the mobile revolution. How far things have moved on with Blackberrys and iPhones. (You cannot understand how much I love my iPhone).

Here’s Patrick Stewart talking tech:

On this hot and sunny afternoon, I thought it was time to show you the wizard behind the curtain who’s helped me a lot with this blog, and he goes by the name of Mick Davies from MAD Computer Solutions. He’s the kind of guy who whenever I have an issue, he’s always there on the end of a phone, email or Skype when I’ve buggered something up! He’s helped massively with my main site as well, richardheathcote.co.uk – and most recently helped me sort meta content out on this blog, editing the php files etc, all very techie! I’ve even impressed myself at times!

So yes, if you ever need assistance with web/IT related stuff, then Mick is your man…..Here’s his website:

http://www.madcomputersolutions.co.uk/

For some time now, our broadband has often lagged, making me feel that we’re not getting the kind of service which you would expect for an (up to) 10MB plan. For most people of course, in theory, 10MB broadband would be plenty quick enough to suit their needs. We decided to look into it, check out exactly we’re receiving down the line, and comparing our monthly bill to a few other providers, including our own, Virgin Media.

As we started the process, it suddenly hit me – we’re still using the same modem we’ve been using for the past 9 years, which was originally supplied by Telewest Broadband before Virgin took over! I had a chat with a techie friend of mine who works in telecoms, and he confirmed that those old modems aren’t cut out at all for the new speeds we’re now (meant to be) used to. The modem we are using, the original Telewest ‘Surfboard’, could really only handle pumping up to 5MB broadband through it. Therefore, it kind of makes us paying for 10MB broadband pointless!

We also found out that we’re paying over the odds for the package we’re on, as the same package on Virgin Broadband’s site was around £10 less than what we’re currently paying. That really is anger-making, as we’ve never been notified of price changes, and never been offered any deals to compensate for this. Heaven forbid they’d ring or write and inform you that you could be saving money!? The price we’d been paying was even more than what you would pay for 20MB broadband, making our package an absolute mockery! So, we decided to ring them direct this morning and make our feelings felt, and see what can be done about the service we’ve had.

In the end they saw our point of view, were very helpful and agreed to reduce our monthly fee by around £10, and also upgrade us to the 20MB service. They’re also sending out a brand new modem that will cope with the speeds properly. All in all, a great result. Having the greater speed now will make things far easier for me, given what I do for a living; uploading/downloading large audio files for clients etc.

The moral of this story isn’t to bash Virgin’s service, as they’re pretty much like any big company, they won’t ring you to tell you you can save money, it’s just a fact of life, same with the banks not telling you about changes to your interest rates! On the contrary, to date, I have to say we’ve had excellent broadband service from Virgin.

The moral of the story is to always be on the lookout to ensure you’re receiving the best service from your provider for the money you pay. Broadband packages change all the time, as do their pricing. You don’t want to be paying for an antiquated service when you could be receiving double the speed for the same price as you’re currently paying, like in our case. The easiest way to ensure that you’re doing all you can is to check your provider’s website regularly, for instance on a monthly basis, as I’ll be doing. Don’t be left out of pocket, make sure you receive value for money.

We all know that whatever service you have, they’ll always quote ‘up to’ 5Mb/10MB/20MB etc, you can’t ever be guaranteed to get the full speed as it depends how far away from the exchange you are. However, if you feel you’re not receiving the speed you think you should be, then there are plenty of online broadband speed checkers that will give you a good approximation of your actual service. Try this one to check your download & upload speeds:

www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/