Is it worth going naked (2011)

Internode have just announced that for customers with existing ADSL2+ broadband, transferring to a Naked plan whilst keeping your existing phone number is now possible.

Just over a year ago I compared the costs, and decided it wasn’t worth it. So has anything changed since then?

Current monthly expenses (Nov 2011) | Service | Description | Cost | | — | — | — | | Broadband | Internode Easy-Broadband-Classic (50GB)* | 47.45 | | Telephone | HomeLine® Budget# | 28.95 | | Total |   | 76.40 |

* – ‘grandfathered’ plan no longer available to new customers. Price includes 5% discount.

# – HomeLine Budget plan activated before newer conditions were introduced which disallow non-BigPond ADSL providers, and also includes $6 to enable Caller Number Display.

This is almost the same as last year, with the only change being Telstra are charging $2 more per month than they used to.

Easy Naked monthly expenses (Nov 2011) | Service | Description | Cost | | — | — | — | | Broadband | Internode Easy Naked Broadband (30GB)* | 56.95 | | Telephone | Internode NodePhone2-Special | 0.00 | | Total |   | 56.95 |

* – price includes 5% discount

Whereas last year I could have got 150GB/month, now for the same price now I’d get only 30! There’s also a one-off setup fee of $79 (for 2 year contract) or $129 outright.

So all other things being equal, there’s a saving of $19.45/month, but with the downside being 20GB less quota. So, could I survive on only 30GB/month? Well looking at the last 12 months, apparently not always:

The next step up is the 200GB plan for $75.95 with 5% disc included. This pretty much nullifies the savings. It’s a pity they don’t offer something between the 30 and 200.

The other thing I’d need to figure out is how this would work with my existing PennyTel VoIP account. As I understand it, my trusty old Sipura SPA 3000 only supports receiving calls from one VoIP provider, and I assume that would need to be NodePhone for the number porting to work correctly. A bit more investigating is required on this front.

Cooking on Saturday

Yesterday I made some cupcakes. We’ll enjoy eating these in lunches this week !😀

The trick is after you make them to immediately put them in the freezer (otherwise there probably wouldn’t be any left!)

Springtime in the garden

Inspired by fellow .NET developer Bill McCarthy’s occasional blog posts on his garden, here’s some of the flowers blooming in our backyard at the moment.

Lavender, roses, snapdragons, roses, roses, sweet peas, geraniums/pelargoniums, hollyhocks, dianthus and more roses.

Yes, we do have a few roses - most of which are coming into bloom right now. Also a bit of work when it’s time to prune them!