Since Ephox is an IBM business partner and we pulled the right strings and made friends with the right people, I get access to IBM’s offices (apparently world wide but Bedfont Lakes is closest and best set up). They’ve got quite a nice business partner suite on the first floor looking up at all the real IBM employee’s offices but before today it’s always been a major pain.

Firstly, without a car it takes about 2 hours to get here which is never fun, but today I have a car so that was ok.

Going through the process of setting up a new apartment in the UK, I’ve found myself Googling a whole bunch of things that normally I wouldn’t need to. For instance, where can I find a desk and chair to set up a home office? Back in Australia I know of a bunch of different stores that would have that kind of thing so I wouldn’t bother searching for it. Here though, I wind up searching for “home office furniture” and get a whole bunch of online only retailers of widely varying reliability. Even if they’re all completely legit – why doesn’t something like IKEA turn up when that’s what all the locals recommended (somewhat grudgingly admittedly)?

After much hassle with getting proof of address and what not, I’ve finally managed to get a mobile broadband deal through 3 in the UK and I’m very impressed. It helps that my house is within a HSDPA area so we’re getting the fastest possible speeds but even when that drops out and we just get 3G connectivity it’s quite usable. At £15/month for 3Gb/month it’s actually quite affordable too. I can see it getting a lot of use on the train and places like that so I don’t wind up wasting huge amounts of time travelling.

Can anyone provide pointers to who the reliable mobile phone and broadband internet providers in the UK (Slough area particularly) would be?  In Australia there are a number of smaller providers (but significantly bigger than mum & pop shops) that give better deals than the major providers but I’m not sure if that’s true in the UK or how I’d find such second-tier providers anyway.