Lixxus Lixx Startbasic

Initial installation of the Lixxus Lixxstart 2000 with an Alcatel USB Speedtouch 330 modem was problem-free and the speed of the service was good. However, when I upgraded my Apple Ibook to OSX.4 (Tiger), the broadband service became unavailable.

Lack of support for Tiger by both Lixxus and Alcatel meant I had to wait for a new driver to be released. Unfortunately, this would not install on the Ibook. Alcatel did not respond to an email for help, and Lixxus suggested that a setting on the Ibook could be causing the problem.

Replacing the modem with a wired router raised new issues, including a suspected problem with the ADSL line during setup and an inability to connect to the Internet when the Ibook revived itself after going to sleep.

I eventually managed to get the router set up, despite experiencing painfully long waits during the installation process making me think the whole thing had stalled.
Many of my initial problems were put down to my Ibook settings or configuration issues – it was only after configuring the network settings manually that the router worked properly.

Since then I have had problem-free surfing. As a novice broadband user, however, I found it frustrating that upgrading to Tiger caused my broadband service to become unavailable and that I received no support from Alcatel.

Lixxus was very helpful in trying to solve the problems, including offering to go through all my Ibook settings and figure out which were wrong, but it really shouldn’t be that difficult. The lesson here is to check with your ISP that its service is supported by your new OS before you upgrade.

On the hardware front, the USB modem (pre-Tiger) and router both worked well once set up, but given the choice I would go for a wireless option so I could connect to the Internet from both my computers (in different rooms) without having wires trailing across the floor.

This is a slightly unusual broadband service, in that it is pay as you go, rather than a fixed monthly fee. At £58.75, the set up costs were among the most expensive on test, but there's no monthly usage cap. The download and upload speeds are a fairly standard 2Mbits/s and 256Kbits/s respectively.

Note: This is part of PCW's long-term group test of broadband Internet packages. Links to all other packages reviewed can be found below