I friend I met up with last week does not have Broadband at home via DSL or Cable. Nor do they use Wifi. They actually use a Vodafone 3G Datacard, providing 3Gig of data a month for a monthly fee.

All the UK carriers now I believe are doing some form of 3G datacard - but finally with decent usage limits (1 Gig being a minimal usable level per month) - and all for varying fees. The above example, in my friend, pays £45-50 a month for her 3G of data. But as she says, “I can use it anywhere” - but she says she will move to a cheaper provider when contract is up. Three now are I see doing same amount of data for £15 a month if tied to a 18 month contract and T-mobile do the same deal also I believe(but with free wifi access in their hotspots bundled). Which brings me to the point of this article:

If you can get 3Gig of data for £15 a month, providing 3Gig of data at up to 2.8Mbit a sec of bandwidth (assuming HSDPA) - why would you use a public hotspot in say Starbucks (which is probably uplinked to the net at a very similar speed)?

More to the point - you can use that data on the train, in places other than the hotspot - using it literally everywhere. The friend in question chatted to me using MSN - in a cab on the way to Heathrow - in a video call for example - impossible with Wifi.. and very impressive.

I also see that Three are even doing pay as you go data (at 10 pounds for the use of 1Gigabyte for 30 daysif the advert in todays paper is to be believed). The use of even 2-3 hours of wifi in many coffee shops would easily pay for 1 gig of data to be used in many coffee shops over the entire country. And with pay and go, theres no need to even be contracted, so this service could even be used by a foreign visitor…

Thus I believe that the days of coffee shops charging expensive rates for broadband access via wifi will soon be over (well assuming the coffee shop isn’t in underground with no signal).

This of course also applies to overcharging hotel chains - in Europe last year I got charged > £15 for 24 hours Internet access (and only for one device!) - now if I could get a pay-and-go sim and a hsdpa modem/3g card for the country being visited (or just take an unlocked one), why would I pay those prices?

Of course all this could lead to coffee shops and Hotels lead lining / filtering to stop 3g signal entering their premises…

I don’t want to say its the best, but I’ve been using Debian, Ubuntu and other APT based Linuxes for years now.   Ubuntu on desktop PC’s and Debian on Servers (only because I have a few servers already on Debian and keeping all identical is worth doing).     I don’t run GUI’s on my servers.

I pretty much use Debian in favour of other linuxes because it is free, and updates are also free.    Debian stable is much like Redhat Enterprise, its stable, and only upgraded when necessary…   and I also love the fact there is the “free” and “non free” package library - so if you build a PC using all “free” packages you know there will be zero licensing concerns.    There are disadvantages however, which I’m sure avid readers will be happy to comment on…

Why do I personally use Debian on my home servers - the main answer is APT.   Its amazingly handy to upgrade packages for security bugs & the entire OS can also be updated in this way if a newer version is up.

The fast paced Linux world often underestimates the needs of enterprises, and home users in that they don’t want to apply a patch every day for some estoric package they don’t even use/want to use.    Patching should only simple, easy, non-intrusive, and just work (without reboot in most cases except for a kernel patch).   APT ticks all of these needs.

Debian is also easy to install in a minimal fashion with only what you need, and is only updates installed package as would be expected.

An example is the major security hole Debian/Linux as had this weekend - to update I done the below:

• apt-get update
• apt-get upgrade
• apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686 (to update kernel)
• reboot

This one simple set of commands updated all the programs within my Debian install to latest release, and also replaced the bad kernel in the above bug.

The other thing I have done before is upgrade the entire OS to a newer “stable” release when Debian stop supporting the old version… this is really simple involving a one line edit of a system file, and the same commands as above (except with dist-upgrade instread of upgrade).   You also only have to reboot in these circumstances if you upgrade the kernel.

This is why I love APT and Debian in particular..   it has been years since I’ve used other linuxes, and I understand Redhat is now on par.    What is your favourite linux and why?

I’ve had ADSL since around 2003 - initially with a 512K service, then 2Mbit, then MAX upon release, all via Andrews and Arnold (who incidentially provide a fine service or I would have moved ages ago).

Anyhow, this post is about my experience over the past few years since I moved into my new build house in  early ‘06 with Sync speeds and MAX .   Initially I was the only person in my street with ADSL and got a full 8Mbit sync - however as my two immediate neighbors got DSL, my sync dropped to a level of 6Mbit a few months upon moving in.
Yesterday one of the neighbors moved house and terminated their DSL as would be expected.    My sync as they moved out has now increased to 8Mbit!.     I believe the 2 things are related - and I’m now happy as I have full speed DSL at home.

Only downside is as the new neighbors move in, I expect I’ll get a drop in sync again..!

Anyone else had similar experiences?