Dial Up is Great!

1. Still the cheapest

The broadband companies may be locked in a price war, but there is still only one clear winner for cost-conscious web users: dial-up. With prices for unlimited local call usage at under £10 a month, it will take years, if ever, for broadband prices to fall this low. If you are a light internet user, or simply just send the odd email, dial-up certainly makes sense - if not for you, then definitely for your wallet.

2. Broadband speeds are available for dial up

The myth that using dial-up is like watching treacle drip down a low incline has been smashed with the introduction of Onspeed. In the past, many companies have claimed that they could speed up your dial-up, but it wasn't before military-developed Onspeed arrived that we could finally raise our hands in the air and hail the arrival of broadband speeds for dial-up prices.

Granted, you won't reach full broadband speed by using OnSpeed, but the difference is remarkable. So how does it work? Well Onspeed intercepts all your incoming data and compresses it enormously, thus speeding up the transfer of pictures and data.

For less than £3 a month and increasing speeds by up to 5 times, Onspeed is perhaps the saviour of dial-up. Click here to see more about Onspeed.

3. No messy contracts

You'll have heard your friends complain about their broadband lock-in periods (many of them 12 months) which prevents them moving around to cheaper providers or simply ditching broadband until that contract runs out. You can laugh in their faces, as there are very few dial-up providers who now lock you in to a contract - so you can move around to new providers as soon as you find a cheaper offer.

4. You don't have to miss phone calls while you are online

One of the great myths of broadband benefits is that it finally frees up your phoneline while you are online, unlike that pesky dial-up connection which hogs the line.

This is true, but that doesn¨t mean you have to miss phone calls while you are dialed-up. A nifty little £20 gadget from a company called Comtech (www.comtechproducts.co.uk) plugs into your pc and phoneline and then alerts you as soon as a call comes in. The onscreen alert allows you to accept the call, thus disconnecting you from the internet.

A worthy investment if you hate missing calls!

5. You will use the net more efficiently

The limitations of speed with a dialup connection can sometimes be a blessing. Broadband has a tendency to turn you into a keyboard-potato. Dial-up forces you to use the internet wisely - sticking to sites that load fast and efficiently, and ensuring you don't spend hours online viewing useless flash introductions.

With a few clicks, you can set your browser to not download images on pages, meaning that the most important info - the text - loads lightning fast, without the unnecessary visual dross that accompanies it.

You may lose out on the visual treats of the internet, but you will be freed up to do all those things in the real world you have been meaning to do. Unlike your broadband friends!

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