Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 7 August 2002
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

From: Simon
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Noel Leeming

I have been accessing Noel Leeming's web site for a few
weeks, under the impression that it was alrady finished and
ready for use by customers. Looks like I have unknowingly
been taking part in their testing! In the past, I have
always found the site to be fast. Today is the first time I
have found it to be slow.

I like Noel Leeming's idea of letting you buy online and
pick it up from the store - this has the advantage of
letting you buy without the shop assistants hassling you,
but you don't have to wait for the courier to call the next
day. Unfortunately, the things I want to buy are at Dick
Smiths. If only we could encourage Dick Smiths to adopt the
scheme.

Aardvark Responds
Yes, I had a trawl around last week myself and found
the site to be quite well designed -- but one of the
problems when you're using a design that has many
individual elements is that it's going to crawl
like treacle when you get any amount of load on it.

Commonsense would have dictated some type of
contingency plan for "launch day."

You only get one chance to make a good impression
as Dave Blyth tells me.




From: Alan
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Broadband

Hi,perhaps Telecom should look at what some internet
service providers are charging in England for broadband DSL
access.
The cheapest price I have found is 20 pounds,which is about
$60nz dollars per month. This is a ADSL 512kb/s download
speed. No download caps either.
Take note Telecom New Zealand.





From: Allister
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: ADSL, Broadband, Jetstart

Bruce,

I have to disagree that JetStart is not broadband.  With my
56k modem, I used to get a practical limit of around 5.5k/s
on downloads from a good connection to a near server.  With
my JetStart connection this practical limit is around
15.6k/s - almost 3 times as fast.

To me, the definition of broadband is simply "magnitudes
faster than dialup".  JetStart fits this definition.  Let's
face it, modems were never going to exceed the basic 56k
capability.

Now, I fully support your stance on all other aspects of
the service!  For an additional $10 per month I could
upgrade to JetStream 600.  However for the extra speed I
have to suffer:

1. No local traffic at 10% charge.
2. No Paradise traffic at 0 charge.
3. All of a sudden, given 1 and 2 above, my monthly usage
exceeds 600Mb.

Bugger.  What I would go for would be a 256k or 512k
limited bandwidth plan.  I currently have 10Gb @ 128k.
Give me 5Gb @ 256k or even 2Gb @ 512k and I'll be happy -
oh, and for less than $10 extra a month per increment.

Better yet, somebody come up with a practical and cheaper
solution that does not involve Telecom in any way.
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