Another Eircom ADSL test

De Rebel

This is good for a laugh. Thing is if the ADSL line test functions with the same level of accuracy............................

Go to the eircom adsl site and click on the link to Find out if your PC meets the minimum specifications for ADSL - be warned its a 2MB download.

Runs 5 tests - my poor PC failed 2:

• Your system has failed a processor check. You may experience some performance problems with the ADSL service or be unable to connect Genuine Intel Boxed P4 2.4GHz, with Intel Chipset
• Your system has failed the browser check. It is recommended that you upgrade to Internet Exploere 5+ in order to avail of the i-stream service. Click here for more information….. IE6+SP1, Hey Eircom, whats 5+1?

[Made the link to the test a direct one - Dusty]

[edit .... deliberately didn't do this in my original post cause I hate linking to .exe files]

timod

Actually six tests...The 0th test fails for me...

Apparantly my Mac and my linux box are not i-stream compatible, as they won't even run the test

melachi

eircoms homepage outdated and of no use to anyone, nothing new there.

SkepticOne

Oh yes,

9. Been, ah, "testing" ADSL since 1998.

RicardoSmith

my P4 1.8@2.4 fails the cpu test and my ie6sp1 also fails. What a joke.

Actually I've failed the errorcom line test a few times but another provider is checking it for tomorrow and refused to comment on errorcoms line test. But reckons I'll pass their one. Bit odd. Especially as their prices are almost the same as errorcom. I await their test with interest!

DC

I wonder who they could be....

Dustaz

Im happily connected on a DSL line and failed that test (AMD Chip and IE 6 - apparently i have to 'upgrade' to an earlier browser to magically make my working connection ... er ... work)

Id guess that over 50% of boards people would fail that test.

De Rebel

Originally posted by timod
Actually six tests...The 0th test fails for me...

Not looking for a row or anything, but it runs 5 on mine.....

• OS
• HD (which produces more rubbish)
• RAM
• Processor
• Browser

and the sixth one is................ ??

De Rebel

Originally posted by Dustaz
Id guess that over 50% of boards people would fail that test.

which so leaves me wondering about their ADSL test.......

stormkeeper

I think they may be trying to prove that it's only for people who know a fair bit (or enough to get by regarding this test) about computers. Think about it... Many of us here know enough about computers to ignore the test and order it regardless, as we know that our PCs support the requirements, but those who know nothing (or very little) about their computer will be put off thinking of getting ADSL just because their computer 'failed' the test, which means they will think that Hi-Speed is the only option for them, even though their system is well above the specs.

It must be one big conspiracy...

Erm... Don't mind my rambling... It's 6am and I'm starting to jump to amazing conclusions... Amazing, but possibly outlandish conclusions...

theciscokid

no kennett i think you're right

its a carefully implemented cash making scheme, it was tested on eircom employees and it worked, they were led to believe that they could only avail of ISDN

(Interesting Soluton Desired by No-one)

stormkeeper

Woah... That is actually the first conspiracy theory-type thing I've done, and it surprises the heck out of me that it actually makes sense...

Seriously though, the way I see it, we need to help out those not as tech-savvy as many of us here from getting lured to the Eircom cash maid, and getting milked by them...

I'm also coming to a theory about the demo... As I may have mentioned before, the Dual-ISDN download rate is visible as a (temporarily 70K) 60K/second download rate, which suggests to me that they're trying to get people to think about ISDN a lot more, couple with the fact that you can't order ADSL from that page, so people are suckered into getting Dual-ISDN, which means around x4 line rental and x2 call charges, unless you're lucky enough to know about UTVip, though sadly that may not be the case if all they know of is Eircom... If they know of Esat's Netsmart offer, that's well for them too...

Anyway, the bottom line is that Eircom seem to want to flog off ISDN, completely forgetting about ADSL.

Any thoughts on this?

theciscokid

Of course they are trying to flog off ISDN because there is more money in it for them , and they spent money setting it up of course :rolleyes: blaggards that they are..

if you ring up an agent , well it happened two out of three asking about dsl they try and sell you isdn?


but there is no happy medium for the punter at the end of the day because if you try and educate them as to not buying isdn and buying dsl you are still advertising fot the rat ..

best let people find out for themselves by showing them the

www.eircomtribunal.com site and the www.irelandoffline.org site,

the more we post these the better

williamb

FWIW, my machine fails because of a "browser error", it recommends I upgrade to Internet Explorer 5+. I have IE6, 128-bit encryption installed.

What's probably confusing it is that I also have Mozilla 1.1 installed, and set as the default browser. But of course, it's still remarkably stupid to reject the system on this basis.

Lemming

Originally posted by theciscokid
Of course they are trying to flog off ISDN because there is more money in it for them

In the short term .....

Originally posted by De Rebel

and the sixth one is................ ??

The rat's cheese test of course .... :rolleyes:

SkepticOne

Ignoring what they spent enabling the various technologies for a moment, ADSL, even at the current price, most likely does not represeent extra income for Eircom since most of the people opting for it are alread forking over bucket loads to them anyway.

Residential users would be the most extreme example here because Eircoms circuit switched network is of a certain capacity in order to deal with peak business traffic.

For example, if you spend, say, €100 in call charges a month mainly for off peak use, how much does it cost Eircom to provide this service? Basically nothing. To understand this a different way, imagine how much eircom would save if you stopped using their lines in the evening. Again nothing. This is because the network must be there to cater to peak business traffic.

Therefore it is in Eircoms interest to extract as much revenue out of underused evening an weekend capacity. It is pure profit (less the negligable electricity charges).

The recent UTV offerings don't change this scenario much because UTV are still paying by the minute for wholesale rates from Eircom. I would not be surprised if Eircom actually want you to use UTVip because this increases their revenue substantially.

For this situation to change, there needs to be competition. In most of the developed world this comes from cable companies, but in Ireland only about 2% of the population have access to genuine competitive infrastructure. Wireless offerings from LEAP and IBB might increase this to around 3% at a push. This is nowhere near enough to influence the monopoly. The other minor competitive pressure on Eircom are ESAT operating under LLU, but they seem to also be concerned with cannibalisation and have priced ADSL similar to Eircom and have yet to produce a consumer oriented service.

There are good reasons to believe that the cable industry will never expand to provide significant competition, in which case we are left with wireless and LLU.

De Rebel

bah pressed the wrong button

spongebob

I heard ESAT are looking for 12 months now as well, it was 3 months when they launched in early summer

M

timod

Originally posted by De Rebel
Not looking for a row or anything, but it runs 5 on mine.....

• OS
• HD (which produces more rubbish)
• RAM
• Processor
• Browser

and the sixth one is................ ??

Read my post again!

The Zeroth (0th) test is that you neeed to be running windoze...

PiE

I still don't understand why Esat can't offer DSL at more reasonable prices. I mean, they're in the exchanges with their own equipment which means they're not buying from eircom (i.e. bitrate). Ok, they might have to pay rental in the exchanges but that can't amount to a terribly large bill.

So whats stopping Esat offering DSL at €40? If they're in a position to do this and they're not doing it, they're 100 times worse than eircom imo.

DC

The reason I believe is that €ircon's offering is so technically inferior that their product looks like great value in comparison.

On it own its still a ripoff, but not relative to €ircon's.

DonegalMan

Surely some of the journalists would find this test c**p a worthwhile article?

Martin Harran

zynaps

Apparently I have 511 megs of ram
Failed the processor and browser "checks" too with my 2.4 ghz p4 and ie6.

I like the idea of it being like a trick question... if you're ignorant enough about computers, you fail, by accepting the results of the test as meaningful at all :P

Another excellent effort from eircom!

....

zynaps

Pimp

OK I have Eircoms DSL, and i d/l the test. Its the same test that you get on the cd in the welcome pack from them, i failed tests then, and i failed them again now. Obviously its a very old test because it wont recognise XP(reports mine as Win2K), any of the latest processors(P4 here) or IE6. The funny thing is when i got DSL i phoned them to say the test cd had failed and as far as i can remember they said it was an old test then(June 2001) and they havent changed a thing. Maybe since they think ISDN is cutting edge technology they havent heard of Pentium 4's, XP or Internet Explorer 6??????

stormkeeper

Originally posted by zynaps
if you're ignorant enough about computers, you fail, by accepting the results of the test as meaningful at all :P

I made this exact point a while ago in this thread (albeit a little smaller), but the fact still remains that people who aren't tech-savvy will fall for Eircoms ploy.

stormkeeper

Originally posted by Pimp
OK I have Eircoms DSL, and i d/l the test. Its the same test that you get on the cd in the welcome pack from them, i failed tests then, and i failed them again now. Obviously its a very old test because it wont recognise XP(reports mine as Win2K), any of the latest processors(P4 here) or IE6. The funny thing is when i got DSL i phoned them to say the test cd had failed and as far as i can remember they said it was an old test then(June 2001) and they havent changed a thing. Maybe since they think ISDN is cutting edge technology they havent heard of Pentium 4's, XP or
Internet Explorer 6??????

Makes you wonder... Doesn't it? :rolleyes:

zynaps

I was referring to what you said, Kennett

stormkeeper

ah

Praetorian

LOL downloaded the file at 110 KB a sec...

Failed the test...Wupdidooo!

Head The Wall

I have been on a lot of our customers sites that have been using dial up modems and they get a call from Errorcom and say "Do you want high speed internet access blah blah 64K etc etc"

The customer none the wiser gets it installed and ends up paying for an extra line rental and higher call charges.

When I call out they say we got this ISDN in for the internet and it's the same speed as before. Turns out Eircom never tell them they need an ISDN TA to use it and the eircom engineers just use the 2 analog convertor ports on the ISDN box.

What a bunch of dicks

zynaps

Exactly my sentiments head! They're relying on the ignorance of your average person wanting internet by giving them the "faster downloads and thus less connection time somehow!" spiel, whereas in effect they're looking at a maximum of twice the speed, if they pay more than twice as much.

It really is atrocious...