Gateway - the Final Frontier?

Advantages: Great characters and cleverly structured
Disadvantages: The domestic violence bit sticks out like a sore thumb

...Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, is very much in the grand tradition of 'hard SF'. Whereas much of what gets put in the science-fiction section of bookshops is actually little more than fantasy with lasers instead of swords, Gateway is part of the Arthur C Clarke, Bradbury and Asimov school that seeks to extrapolate fantastic worlds from real current science, and examines how science and technology could affect the peoples of those worlds. In the future, Earth is massively over-populated - and starving. Food is synthesised from hydrocarbons, and there's not enough to go around. Life is brutal and grinding poverty is everywhere. For the bravest, however, there's an incredible opportunity - Gateway. A relic of a vanished super-race, Gateway is a huge space station filled with alien ships. Huge amounts of money are promised to brave...

Olly_Plimsoll 22.05.2009 · Read review
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Review of Gateway - Frederik Pohl

virgin media

Advantages: TV till you drop and good internet.
Disadvantages: Poor customer services, poor prices,

...Virgin have gone down in my expectations and i am currently thinking of leaving them. When i first joined virgin media it was called telewest, i signed up to a large tv package and the internet at a cost of 40 pounds per month. This worked fine untill virgin media took over, Although they did bring better and more chanels to the table the prices went up and the customer service went down. When virgin took over they rang me to say i would be better off if i got the whole package which included xl tv, 20gb broadband and a phone line with free weekend calls as it would take my bill down to 35 pound a month, i also pay for disney cinemagic aswell so it would basically be taking 5 pound off my bill which i thought was fair enough. Since then the bill has went up and up and up! I still have the same package to which i had 4 years...

vikkiz 19.10.2009 (20.10.2009) · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

Virgin Media

Advantages: none
Disadvantages: Freezing tv channels, unhelpful staff

...Virgin Media took over Cable (not sure exactly when), They offer sevices such as Broadband, tv and the phone, their bills are on a monthly basis. The reason I chose Virgin I signed up with Virgin approximately 6 months ago, the reason I decided to sign up with them is because my family are all customers of Virgin and I thought it would be cheaper on the phone calls, also I prefer the monthly bills rather than quarterly bills like with BT. Arranging for installation I had a leaflet from Virgin with their phone number on, so I phoned them give all the details they needed and they give me an installation date which was approx a week later. While on the phone I arranged to pay by Direct debit. Day of installation I recieved a welcome letter stating the date and time of my installation, the following Monday was when I was to...

jenny967 08.01.2008 · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

Virgin Media - Getting better...

Advantages: Basic sky channels are back!, Some good VOD content, good unlimited internet packages
Disadvantages: VOD reliability not 100%, webmail reliability & mailbox size, customer service rather 'hit or miss'

...** Important News/Update (Edit) 16/11/08:- Ok so on Thursday the basic Sky channels finally returned to Virgin Media, at least for those of us who are on the higher TV packages (their included in the L and XL packages, which are the two most expensive packages, I believe), which was good news for me! now I can access Sky1, Sky2 and Sky3 (Sky3 is also available on Freeview), as well as Sky News and Sky Sports News and for people on the XL package, we also get Sky Arts and Sky Arts2 as well as Sky Real Lives, which is nice, so obviously im quite relieved and impressed with that. I've also been trawling through the VOD content recently, I now feel more tempted to watch cable alot more than I have done over the last year or so knowing i can catch Bones and 24 Redemption and I can catch Fringe, a new show showing on Sky1 and its being...

IzzyS 26.07.2007 (16.11.2008) · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

Virgin Media Mayhem

Advantages: eventually my account was sorted for the better
Disadvantages: too much ringing round.. customer service team awful

...Since i started with Virgin Media I had nothing but problems, thankfully everything is all sorted now and touch wood i won't have to speak to them again, however the first problem i had was my landline. I went to use the phone one day and basically i had no dial tone... i rang customer services and it stated on a automated message that if you were experience problems in the ST3 area, the engineers were aware of it and were working to rectify the problem. I thought nothing of it and assumed that my line would be working pretty soon. The day after i tried it again and still no dial tone.. so i rang them again and on this occasion there was no automated message i got straight through to an advisor who ran tests on my line and said there was nothing wrong with it. Well surely if i have no dial tone and no one has touched it there is...

blondgem 24.09.2007 · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

The Truth About Virgin Media

Advantages: Good package prices, ability to haggle against competition, fast broadband
Disadvantages: System errors and downtimes can happen from time to time, may have to monitor your account regular

...I've been a subscriber to Virgin Media since they were under the NTL brand name, back in the days when we used to pay 1p a minute to dial-up to the Internet. I have mixed feelings about Virgin. I will share with you some of the key advantages and downsides to being a customer. If you are a first time customer, you can get a lot of decent bundles on your first point of contact. It is also worth checking out Quidco (see my latest review to find out more about them) who have various additional benefits when signing up to them, such as cash-back that can be up to £150 on some contracts. With Virgin Media, you can get some decent packages and its fibre-optic broadband Internet connection, which has been rated as the overall fastest speed in the country. If you are an existing customer and you see a competitor of Virgin are offering...

Lehen 15.06.2009 · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

Gateway to trouble

Advantages: Tech support
Disadvantages: Poor customer support and delivery

...SEE END FOR UPDATED SECTION I got this new computer a couple of months ago; I decided to go with Gateway because they have a better reputation than most. I also looked at Novatech, but as I didn’t know much about them chose Gateway, as the prices for the spec I wanted were almost similar. When I was first looking a getting a new PC, I was looking at gateways, £999.99 deal, but was persuaded to buy the one I now have for 1180 (ish). I didn’t need much persuading as the system had nearly double the spec for only £180 pounds. For the money I got 1Ghz athlon processor, 256MB RAM, 40Gb hard drive, tnt2 32MB video card, creative labs digital sound card, 17 inch monitor, printer, scanner and all the usually e.g. free software mouse keyboard etc… OK this service was great, from the Gateway store in Crawley, but what...

Please_believe_me 17.06.2001 (19.06.2001) · Read review
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Review of Gateway (Shop)

Travel to the top of The Gateway Arch Mork-style - in an egg.

Advantages: Elegant architectural icon. Magnificent vies and photographic opportunity.
Disadvantages: Lenghy queues. Only partially accessible for disable visitors.

...The elegant Gateway Arch, reaching up to 630 feet dominates St Louis? skyline. Standing in the Jefferson Natural Expansion Memorial Park, the arch symbolises the role St Louis played as the gateway to the west. Shortly after the Second World War in 1947, a competition was privately financed to find a suitable architectural centrepiece for the park. The aim was to commemorate Thomas Jefferson?s vision of the spread of freedom and democracy from ?sea to shining sea? and his commissioned expedition in 1804 to the west coast headed by Lewis and Clark. Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel?s design of this graceful tapered stainless-steel catenary arch won over the 171 other entries. Construction of this remarkable structure took around three years to complete. Pictures of the construction can...

MAFARRIMOND 28.06.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Gateway Arch, St Louis, Missouri

Virgin Media

Advantages: 3-in-1 bill, fairly reliable, not too pricey
Disadvantages: Sluggish interactive, fewer channels than Sky.

...I have been with Virgin Media ever since they took over from NTL. We didn't notice any major differences in the transition from one to the other. We upgraded our Broadband from 1-3MB which required a modem as the old set top box could not suport any more than the 1MB we intially started with. As we were previously with NTL, this is the only thing that Virgin Media have set up for us, and it was a flawless, hassle free and tidy job that they performed. Having been with them "from the start" (not counting the time with NTL) I can safely say I have only experienced loss of service on three small seperate occasions. Once was when we lost the sports channels during a Cricket Test Match England were playing in, the internet has gone off for maintainence once, and the third was when some, not all channels were unavailable for an hour...

jedimasterlincoln 15.01.2008 · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media

VIRIGN MEDIA - TV - INTERNET

Advantages: Good range of on demand services - upto 50MB internet
Disadvantages: Hardware problems - bad customer service - High prices

...Virigin media offer - Broadband, Television, mobile phone, and a telephone service. Television; The On demand service which covers - music - catchup - tv choice - movies and interactive. This basically allows you to demand music videos, movies, the best of the weeks television, a wide range of movies when - from classics to new films - and on tv choice on demand you can choose anything from comedy classics to documentaries. Quite a lot of channels and a wide range of TV packages - i currently have the XL package which offers free access to all on demand services except movies. The channel layout is good - but it does change quite a lot - mostly without warning - although this wont matter if you have set your favourite channels as they will still exist but with the new numbers. The control is OK - i mean it has all that is...

jameweights 04.01.2009 · Read review
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Review of Virgin Media