I changed to O2 and....

....so far so good, except for one or two small niggles.

I posted on here a few weeks back about moving from AOL and why - basically I had had frequent dropped connections and slow speeds (<1mbps) for almost 12 months and the blame was put at my end by AOL (pc or distance from exchange or faulty wiring). I spent too many hours trying out solutions and havings checks made, none of which suggested a concrete reason why the problems occurred.

So I gave up and switched to O2 because they offered unlimited use, much higher speeds, wireless router, free phone support & live online support, & a 100 day get out (pre 31 March, think it's now 50 day) for �12.50. If I'd had a mobile phone with them it would have been �7 odd.

I got my mac from aol within 2 days - they also offered a �9.99 deal to match all but the free phone support & the long get out period. But after all the problems re disconnection I decided I wasn't going to risk another 18 months of it.

O2 were really on the ball keeping me notified by texts of dates, delivery etc and I got my new router 4 days after ordering and was connected on the day they said I would be.

They also warned that the connection might be unsettled for the first week or so as they constantly test my line etc to find the best speed (or whatever) - they were right, we had disconnections several times a day for the first five days. Since then, no problem and speeds have been reaching the dizzying (to me) heights of 7.5 mbps.

Now, I might have an issue with the other pc in the house and it's signal but as a visiting laptop has no problem, that might be the wireless connector on the pc causing a problem.

The niggling probs? Well, I installed the free McAfee which came with it and that isn't automatically updating - something I will sort with O2 today as it's supposed to be "managed" by them. Plus Mcafee seems to be slowing down web pages etc - is that likely? I have these rocketing speeds but pages take longer to display. I had to uninstall AVG to load mcafee ......strongly tempted to swap it back again.

The other thing I miss is the ease with which email accounts could be created and switched to/from with AOL. With O2 you get your main first email account done for you on Outlook but for additional ones, you have to again register with O2 with the additional name/pw and then input all the settings etc on Outlook. Not used Outlook before and I guess aol users are used to having things done for them.

The last niggle is the poor website - it's mainly mobile phone based and poorly laid out with very few sensible paths to links and info. But then I expect that O2 expect you to make use of the freephone number

If connection and speed is maintained, I'm well pleased I switched.

A good story for once . But:-

In reply to:

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I had to uninstall AVG to load mcafee ......strongly tempted to swap it back again.

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Yes, swap back. McAfee and Norton are both huge resource-swallowers.

That's if you can manage to delete McAfee! When I had it I ended up reformatting as it just kept reinstalling itself, I couldn't even find where from.

Interestingly I deleted Norton 360 a bit ago with no problem, because that is supposed to be difficult as well. Then the other day I happened to see something with Symantec in the name. So I did a search for it with Windows Explorer. A huge amount of stuff just littering the disk, including all the signature updates and probably getting on for 100 directories with stuff in, and not easily deleted, but I managed. Over 400Mb of rubbish.

You may find McAfee does the same.

Re OE and email, it sounds like you are setting up multiple mailboxes. There is little need for multiple maiboxes for most people, really only if you have multiple Windows user accounts on your computer or if you have email accessible from more than one machine on a network.

Think of your house, how many letter-boxes have you got? But if you live in a block of flats you need a letterbox at the front for each resident.

So if you have only the one Windows user account you set up one mailbox on O2. Then you set up your initial account in OE with that mailbox address.

You then find out if the mailbox at O2 allows unlimited aliases. If it does, ignore the next paragraph and carry on below it.

If it does not you have to set up aliases at the O2 end, not extra mailboxes. Think again of the letterbox at home. There can be any number of people at the address, each receiving mail to "Person 1", "Person 2", Person 3" etc. at that address. That's a similar concept to aliases.

Then in OE you set up a number of folders, one for each alias. If you want each alias to be able to send email with their own address rather than the master address then you set up an OE account for each, but you do not check the box "Include this account when receiving mail or synchronising", as it will all come in from the master mailbox so long as that has it checked.

Then you go to Tools >> Message Rules >> Mail, and follow your nose in the procedure there. Basically you set up rules that look at the To or From or Subject and route it to the correct folder that you set up earlier. Which means you can also have folders that just contain TBB stuff for example of interest perhaps to more than one person.

With multiple mailboxes the procedure is similar, except that for each mailbox just one OE account needs to "Include this account...".

If the extra mailboxes are accessed from a different Windows user, then only the mailbox relevant to that user should be in that OE setup, and should be missing from the first user's OE setup.

In my case I receive email from several email services, but there is only one Windows user on the computer. So I work just as above - just one incoming OE account for each service, and outgoing OE accounts set to the correct SMTP server.

Finally!!!!

The home network bit. For that there are a few options.

The simplest is only have email accessed from one computer on the network. That's what I do as it isn't too inconvenient.

The next way is allow outgoing mail from any computer but only one has an account with the "Include this account..." checked. Bit of a no-no really as the users of the other computer wouldn't be able to read incoming. The reason for not setting any "Include..."s on other computers is that incoming mail would end up scattered between them so impossible to keep track of, and it is virtually impossible to transfer between them.

Third is the second reason for multiple mailboxes at O2. Each computer would access a different mailbox, though with multiple aliases, folders and sorting rules if required as above - and as in multiple Windows user accounts also above.

That's fine if it is you and partner use one computer and a different set of people, (are children people?), using each different computer. But if anybody uses any computer then I think the the simple option may be best. That way you easily track kid's emails, but unless you have multiple Windows users they just as easily track yours.

If you go to http://www.aol.co.uk and try to login with your email address, it will send you through a process so you can keep your email address you had with aol - you can keep all of them.

Alternatively, ring AOL and ask them to be p ut on the FREE Email Plan which still allows you to keep all your email addresses and use the AOL software if you wish.

You might have to clarify you want the free email plan, because the Indian tech support think you just want free email, but specify you want the email plan which includes the free email and software access