Phone and Internet(which one)

[Nichthewood]

We are moving to France in January. At the moment we use French telecom and AOL. We only have a dial up internet, so has anyone got any advice or recommendations to companies and packages that may be available. ( We have no broadband where we are)

[Alfa]

The one recommendation I would definitely make is to rid yourself of AOL !

Uninstall it and use another ISP - nothing comes close to AOL for being intrusive and demanding.

Alfa.

[Deimos]

I would imagine the best telephone carrier would depend on where the bulk of your call costs would be to (e.g. local in France, national in France or International). I stuck with France Telecom though use other carriers for long distance and international (i.e. I did not subscribe to pre-selection with anybody).

For example, calling the UK off peak is very cheap (1,4 centimes per minute) with Tele Rabais and that does not involve opening an account, nor paying “up-front”, etc.

(I agree with the comment about AOL - mainly from their "privacy policy" and attitude)

Ian

[Eslier]

If you want to change isp then your first challenge will be to try and cancel your aol subscription - not as easy as you might expect. It took me about four phone calls each of about 40 minutes to an hour long, lots of demanding to speak to a supervisor and I almost lost the will to live. It's very hard to stop an direct credit card payment !

If you achieve that challenge then whatever you do DON'T try and delete aol from your system - it is quite likely to delete critical components of Internet Explorer and cause all sorts of oher mayhem. Leave it on your computer and change all your Internet connection defaults.

[Jenny Rennes]

I cannot agree with you Eslier about getting rid of aol.

A concerted effort will have the desired effect.

If you run the uninstall facility then search your registry and delete anything with aol in it you will very nearly get rid of the thing.

There might be a few vestiges left and you might still have a tray icon and an entry in add/remove programs which will not have a file size.

If you do have problems with IE after uninstall simply update the latest version from www.microsoft.com which is free.

aol is uuuuuggggghhhhhh.

Jenny Rennes.

[GG]

I know I go on but I can't speak more highly of TLK2 for cheap calls from France and watch this space because in October they are bringing on a broadband package, don't know prices yet but I'm sure they will be published soon and no doubt will be very cheap compared to others.  If you want to keep in touch about it I will gladly help you - email me on [email protected]