Our computer forum and others never did have an answer last time, but the problem went away.
I have about 24 hours to cancel the deal for this year if it's the provider.
Sitting watching the word Connecting and even timing out is the fault that went away.
After simply not being able to cure the fault some months ago, the local computer guru delivered something for me and I showed him the very, very slow Connecting time I used to get
sometimes but not others. It could be Prune, or Headlines, whatever, one never knew. Often time out before showing.
He blamed my Wi-Fi connection and loaned me 10metres of 'yellow' wire. Can't be that, some downloads are quite quick, thinks I.
It made an astonishing difference. Or at least, something did.
From that day on I worked at the modest 12 download and small upload figures on my cheap and cheerful connection. Plenty fast enough and it was one heck of a deal. (155 for the phone I don't need and zilch for the broadband. When the 75 quid check arrived, I'd forgotten all about that bonus. It was a cheap year.) However, shortly after starting a new year for 'not bad but not cheap' price, the Connecting problem came back.
I'd concluded it was my slow Upload speed that was at fault. 12 and a bit down today,
but only .62 up. I reason that some sites want to suck information back from me and it's the up speed that's really ruining the whole deal. That would explain the variation. However, I have no idea why that day the wire was installed everything went okay for a while. No, not sure of the up speed in that era. Yes, I know, would've been handy.
Time's running out and I'm stuck for a year with a crap net if there's not something I'm missing and can fix.
W10 on both. Latest FireFox. One dual i5 and one quad i5 with 8 gigs. Both hard wired to the router. The fast one is faster, but still I suddenly get the problem.
Relative values. One recalls putting one's pencils in a jam jar and feeling pleased my mum had washed it out first. I don't feel that pleased owning all this kit.