Hi Pete and thanks for the welcome.

The idle time doesn't give me too many problems; if I'm online I'm usually doing something so it's rarely idle.
It just seems like such a penny-pinching thing to burden people with.

AH Yes Well Mrs - thats ntl all over :rolleyes:

It isn't really a penny pinching move. It is a move to free up the the modem pools so that other users can dial-in and get connection on a contended service. If every dial-up user never disconnected the no-one else would be able to connect. Most dial-up ISP's have taken the view that if you are idle for 10-15 mins then you are no longer utilizing the connection which someone else could.

Yes, that's true I suppose :shrug:

If I remember right the cut-off for free ntl dialup was 4 minutes - one of the changes when they started charging was the increase to 15 minutes?

It takes me ages to type replies to messages - trying to do it on-line in less than 4 minutes was a real pain!:p

My last ISP before I went with NTL had a 10 min idle time.

There are many ways round this - the worst ones to use are the tools that keep alive by pinging, these are usually detected (or they were on the ISP I had).

Best do what others do - set your mail client to probe the mailservers every so often.

When I was on dial up, I downloaded the emails, drop the line, go through the emails and do all the replies (No time limit as your off line) dial up and send. Simple!

People still use 56k ? I was at a friend that still uses 56k cos he too far from ADSL exchange and no cable company nearby. It was ABSOLUTE TORTURE

Try some of the suggestions above ref popping your email every 8 minutes or so, it you're still having problems pm me and i'll have a look.

Try AOL, I know they are a little more expensive, but never seem to drop you, I've left my Nan's computer on-line all night while I was in bed and it was fine.