ISP's

[Shazz]

My old man is set on switching to Talk Talk "broadband" (thank god i leave for uni in 2 months) , but basically, does anyone use the free broadband they offer for gaming? and is it remotely decent.

He still fails to see the hidden catches involved in the so called "free" broadband

[Zenith]

Most of the forum posts I've read about TalkTalk are negative in that Carphone Warehouse apply traffic shaping to the bandwidth. This is good from the ISP point of view since it throttles out all those nasty P2P downloaders. However, if they don't set their filter rules correctly, gaming traffic could get caught up in the shaping since it is usually UDP traffic... like most of the P2P traffic.
Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

For Mr and Mrs Average who make a few phone calls, don't call 08 or 09 numbers and aren't going to whore downloads on their connection, it would seem attractive. If your folks are set for getting it, ask them if they could hold off for those couple of months until you go to uni because it won't affect you then.

[Wizzo]

18 month contract too.