any computer geek can help me please?

[heatemyfather]

Hmm, yes, to be honest I think most computers do not or very soon will no longer come with a dial up modem installed, it's a minority requirement so why should they? Especially in a laptop where power and space is a premium.

You will either need to get a USB dial up modem (very cheap if you know where to look, i.e. NOT PC World!) or do as someone already suggested and share your internet connection from your other PC, there are guides on how to do this on the web, I think it's a pretty easy thing to set up for XP, not sure about Vista. No doubt someone has tried it and made a web guide about it already though, so get googling!

If your other PC has a wireless card in it then you may be able to set up wireless internet sharing, assuming that your laptop has wireless built in too (most do these days).

Never had a problem with this myself - my Mac is currently connected to broadband, but I could easily switch to dialup as the Airport Base Station it is wired to has a built-in dial-up modem (the Mac does not have one built in).

[sparkdeco]

thanks for all your help and the most recent help too!

After a long hard battle, finally managed to get set up with broadband with BT. They were the only company prepared to deal with the line exchange problem we had, so it was Hobson's choice with not the cheapest of ISPs.

Still, been very pleased with them so far & it turned out that the laptop was only equipped to take on b/band and not the old dinosaur of a dial up.

thanks again fellow ebiders, very grateful.

Dawn x

[heatemyfather]

BT seem to take a lot of flak but their basic broadband connection is very solid and actually faster than many bragg about in their adverts, it would seem. Let's face it - they still maintain most of the lines in this country so if anyone knows how to fix it, it's them; generally they fix problems within a few minutes or an hour or two after being made aware of a fault.

My only annoyance is their monthly usage limits (they do not cut you off if you go over, btw), they need to be much higher what with all this new iPlayer and other streaming stuff, software updates, online gaming, etc. It seems just basic websites seem to use it up much quicker than they used to a couple of years ago, the download size of pages and images just continues to grow.