uboot.com

I first discovered www.Uboot.com, on online text/SMS service, 2 years ago when they were young and free. Since then alas, they have started charging for their service… but I knew this would happen. The subscription cost is nothing compared to the savings you make if you decide to join. I’m not kidding – my mobile bill has changed radically since becoming a member and Uboot gives me what I need to satiate my texting needs as well as some fun stuff ...
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WHY USE UBOOT?

If you are a text addict like myself, you will know the agony of opening up the latest mobile bill and gasping with horror at all the texts you ‘supposedly’ sent last month. You frown with annoyance, check your breathing and vow that you never sent this many (‘they must be wrong’) and if you did, this must stop. From now on you will only send a maximum of two a day, that’s it, no more exorbitant text-sending ... more

I first discovered www.Uboot.com, on online text/SMS service, 2 years ago when they were young and free. Since then alas, they have started charging for their service… but I knew this would happen. The subscription cost is nothing compared to the savings you make if you decide to join. I’m not kidding – my mobile bill has changed radically since becoming a member and Uboot gives me what I need to satiate my texting needs as well as some fun stuff for my long suffering mobile phone (a Nokia 6100).

WHY USE UBOOT?

If you are a text addict like myself, you will know the agony of opening up the latest mobile bill and gasping with horror at all the texts you ‘supposedly’ sent last month. You frown with annoyance, check your breathing and vow that you never sent this many (‘they must be wrong’) and if you did, this must stop. From now on you will only send a maximum of two a day, that’s it, no more exorbitant text-sending for you.

But this doesn’t have to be! I was at this desperate stage when a friend told me about Uboot. Basically, you can send loads of texts online from the Uboot site once you join up, at a fraction of the cost compared to your (thieving) network provider. You can also get lots of other stuff like e-mail, ringtones, access to chatrooms etc.

It's really user friendly and easy to use and as a Ciao member, you’re online lots anyway - why not send texts from the internet and save some cash?

SO WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

Mmm - mainly saving money. Uboot offer several packages to suit all texter levels – read on!

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- Uboot Plus (£0.83p per month) is a flat rate sms package, giving you up to 100 sms per month at low rate. Once you've made a single payment for the package, most users don’t have to worry about paying for individual sms again until the end of the subscription period. Then they are £0.5p each if you don’t want to resubscribe. If you do this you will then be on the standard account and be able to top up your ‘Uboot’ card with funds from your credit card as and when you need a top-up. Far better to re-subscribe though!

Features of the Uboot Plus package:

100 SMS texts per month to all the mobile networks in the country in which you are registered.
Normal and superlong sms (160 / 300 characters)
SMS delivery report
Confirmation of delivered sms direct to your "inbox".
SMS gateway on your nickpage('sms me')
Visitors to your personal ‘nickpage’ can click 'sms me' to send sms directly to your mobile. there is a limit of 5 sms per month for this service though.

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- Club Uboot (£1.67p per month) - A combined package of flat rate sms and a selection of your own webpage (‘nickpage’) enhancements. You can send up to 200 sms each month for a single one-off payment. enough for you to text away to your heart's content without worrying about paying for individual text messages.

Features:

200 SMS per month to all the mobile networks in the country in which you are registered.
Normal and superlong sms - 160 / 300 characters.
SMS delivery report - confirmation of delivered sms direct to your Uboot "inbox".
Selection of different 'skins' for your nickpage.
3 'club pages'
3 easily edited subpages to your ‘nickpage’, you can upload images and much more - no HTML knowledge required!
5 free photo uploads a month
With ubootpixx you can get your fotos online and send your own MMS. Each month you get more uploads and they will never expire!
sms gateway on your nickpage ('sms me')
visitors to your nickpage can click 'sms me' to send sms directly to your mobile. There is a limit of 30 sms per month for this service.
higher rank in search results - club users will be displayed ahead of standard users in 'find users' search results.

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- Club Light (£0.42p per month) is club uboot basically (as above) without the sms features and is therefore much cheaper but I don’t see this package being useful to any self-respecting text addict:

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- Standard User - You also have the option of registering and not selecting a package – you simply top-up your ‘Uboot’ cash card with funds from your credit card and use Uboot for texts only, as and when you need them. Although this is certainly cheaper than the normal rate from your mobile network (just £0.05p a text), it’s nowhere near as great as the value for money you get with being on one of their packages. You also revert to being a ‘Standard User’ if you don’t re-subscribe to a package once your time is up.

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Personally, Uboot Plus (the 100 texts a month one) meets my needs just fine as I’m not bothered about ‘nickpages’ or uploading photos – I just want to text, text, text!

By joining you also get more perks such as access to the Uboot community, the ability to download ringtones and more – read on for details.

OK – I COULD HANDLE ONLINE TEXTING, BUT HOW DO I JOIN UP?

It’s easy – you go to www.uboot.com, click to register as a new member and enter some personal details including your chosen username and password. People tend to choose really wacky usernames on here so go with the flow! Then you choose which package you’d like to be on, and pay for it via credit card or the ‘Uboot card’ facility, a handy little thing you can use to pay for all sorts of things on Uboot. To use the cash card though, you will need to top-it up with funds from your credit card, so maybe just pay for your subscription via credit card first, then add some more funds to your Uboot card later for fun things like ringtones etc.

HOW CAN I PAY?

This is my only gripe with them – they have stopped accepting switch payments and so you can only pay via credit card or Uboot Cash Card. And since you can only top-up your Uboot cash card with your credit card… they only accept credit card, really. But your payment is made on a secure server so no problems there.

I’VE BECOME A MEMBER – NOW WHAT?

Once you’ve registered, have a look around the site and get a feel for it, it’s really straight-forward to use with all the functions on a menu bar to the left of the screen. Personally I’d say the next step is to populate your Address book. However, you can also text people sporadically as and when you need to, by entering the persons’ mobile number and clicking ‘send’. But adding people to your address book is fun and means that you won’t have to tap in their numbers again, just select them from a drop-down list when you want to send them a text. A scatter-brain like me is gleefully happy when they make things as easy as this! I don’t know more than 3 mobile numbers, God help me I just can’t retain that information, so better to store it with Uboot for ease of use.

LET’S GET DOWN TO TEXTING

From this point on, and depending on what package you subscribed to, you can send text messages to your little hearts content to any of your friends, or any other Uboot member for that matter. If you don’t have a phone but your mate does, you can text them from Uboot and if they then reply to your text, it will magically appear in your Uboot Inbox for you to read – fantastic.

WHAT TYPES OF TEXT CAN I SEND?

You can send standard texts, super long texts and international texts, all dependent on the package you signed up with. My only problem here is that I have quite a few international friends and to send them a text I have to pay on my Uboot card, it’s not part of a package… But considering I am paying so much less for an international text compared to my network, this is nothing to moan about really.

VIP SMS are no longer available on Uboot. It used to mean your text was sent as priority, compared to standard messages. VIP texts were also displayed directly on the screen of the receiver’s mobile, the recipient didn’t even have to press on ‘read’ to view the text, it was just… there on their screen. I used this a few times when it was around but it freaked people out a bit so maybe this is why it’s been discontinued!

HOW TO TRACK YOUR TEXT MANIA/USAGE

You can check the status of how many texts you have sent in any month by going to your ‘Account’ and happily continue texting until you’ve reached your limit. The slate then gets cleared and you start all over again next month. If you want to read texts you’ve sent to people, simply check your ‘Outbox’ as it will save copies here (handy to check when you think you’ve said something in a text but haven’t, or more worryingly, said something you shouldn’t have!).

E-MAILS

You can also send emails direct from Uboot as they give you a free account but as I already have plenty of e-mail accounts I have never used this part. Probably quite practical though, as you could check your texts and e-mails in one place.

Your e-mail address will probably be yourchoiceofusername@uboot.com. In your ‘Messagebox’ you can keep an overview of all incoming and outgoing sms and email: You get an inbox, outbox, drafts and trash folders, and your ‘my folders’ where you can create and name folders as needed.

Uboot have now updated the site to say that they've ordered new hardware and installed new anti-spam software, to offer a problem-free and spam-free e-mail system which is great news for anyone considering joining up (how fed up are you with Hotmail’s junk e-mails???).

UBOOT COMMUNITY ZONE

The site isn’t just for texts – you can also be more involved in the community of Uboot if you want to be. You can see if other Uboot users are online and chat to them via the ‘Chatboard’ for instant chat. You can also see what the ‘Pinboard’ has to offer, this is more of a messageboard though for posting messages and asking questions etc. Check out the ‘Hotshots’ section, where you can vote for best photos submitted by Uboot members in their weekly competition. You can submit photos too if you have the ability to upload pics in your monthly package.

UBOOTFUN.COM

You can download ringtones (polyphonic and standard), wallpaper, games, picture SMS, mobile logos, MMS content, voicemails, screensavers and more from their site www.ubootfun.com and pay for anything downloaded with your Uboot cash card. I have never had any problems (well, with the 2 ringtones I have downloaded!) with this service. You can listen to tones before downloading, although some of them do sound a bit naff online…

Be sure to check if the type of tone you want is available (polyphonic or standard etc) and that the tune you want is compatible with your mobile model. You may end up with a horrific sounding tone otherwise!

SUMMARY

For me, my phone bill and my friends this site has been a blessing as it sorts me out completely. I have no major qualms and am now a happier texter thanks to them. They even remind me when my subscription is running out which is great as I’d probably never know… If they made an automatic deduction from my card to renew this might be handy but then again they’d have a bit toooo much access to my money then. So I renew as required.

My only comment would be that sometimes, very rarely, texts take a while to arrive (hasn’t happened in a while though) and that customer services is based in Germany so they’re English is reasonable but could be better considering they’re meant to be a European service.

Overall, tiny qualms when I think of all the money I’ve saved - visit www.uboot.com to join!

If you’ve reached this far & enjoyed the review please rate it so I can see how helpful it was to you, and leave a comment if you feel it’s worthy ;o)
 

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