I have quit Ciao and will never return - please feel free to remove me from your CoT if I am in ther...
I have quit Ciao and will never return - please feel free to remove me from your CoT if I am in there.
Member since:25.12.2000
Reviews:56
Members who trust:53
What an excellent idea! Internet access at reasonable prices - you can pay a minimum and multiples of £1. The time you get is obviously related to the time of day and how busy they are. The worst I have seen is £1 for 24 mins. This tends to improve at about 8pm and then again at 11pm/midnight - when you would be looking at about £1 for 50 mins to 1hour. The real bargain is after about 1-2am, when £1 gets you 6 hours - although in effect you won't actually get 6 hours, because as the morning dawns, the time you get for your money will start to decrease.
The cafes are clean, smart and have friendly staff and are of course ideal for people without internet access at home. I used them to access Napster for music downloads because I didn't have a CD writer at home. It is very easy to do. The internet connections they have there are (I believe) T3 connections. These provide lighting quick download speeds and reliable connections, and are capable of being able to download a whole song (5mb file typically) in 10 seconds (as opposed to 20 mins on a 56k modem like I have at home) Obviously (for anyone who doesn't know napster) this would depend on the connection of the person you are uploading from.
Downstairs, they provide various services for users, including CD writing for only 50p (+CD if you don't have your own), photocopying, colour printing etc etc. My criticisms here are that firstly, they don't have many staff downstairs, and their priority is customers wanting to buy tickets to go upstairs. At peak times (which to be honest is all day and night sometimes) they are very inattentive to people wishing to copy CD's or print something. The other problem, which is CD copying related, is that firstly, they use an awful piece of software called WinONcd. For some reason when they drag the tracks from your virtual hard drive for burning to CD, some tracks inexplicably will not drag. Therefore you cannot have those songs. They say that the file is possibly corrupt, however now I have a CD writer at home and use different software, I have never had one MP3 file that will not drag for copying. I have a feeling they have something set up wrong. It can be quite annoying, that you spent your time and money getting the music (at very quick download speeds) only for your favourite song not to drag across!!! The second problem which is heavily related, is that the staff are not, how shall I put it......technically minded, which can cause problems with copying as things do go wrong which they cannot fix. The last time I was there was the final straw (it prompted me to buy my own CD writer) as firstly about a third of my songs wouldn't drag across; then there was a writing problem. They used 4 of my CD's to try again and eventually said they couldn't do anything. So I went home empty handed, and 4 CD's short.
Aside from these problems, I have very few criticisms of them. The only few warnings that I'd give would be that firstly, there are no toilets (I guess to stop drug taking, and people walking in off the streets to use them). Secondly, crime is rife in there - when I was last there, a man pickpocketed the girl on the terminal next to us. Keep your belongings close to you!! Lastly, at night they often close off half the building for cleaning and this can make it very crowded and difficult to find 2 terminals next to each other. Trust me, it is probably as busy through the night, as through the daytime!
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Good review(-: ........................................................Darko
wiggglypufff 27.12.2000 01:57
Great op, thanks :)
Kozinski 27.12.2000 00:38
These easyeverything shops have intrigued me - but I was never sure how they worked or what they were like - but now I know. A very good opinion xr2i16v!
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