Originally Posted by Steve B 
Good blog there Bob!
Definitely an interesting read
the only thing I would say is that in all the years we've had ntl broadband, i've never needed to use a CD to install it once; its just plug and play.
Thanks for the kind words.
As for your caveat - what you need to realise is that I was given a Set-up guide package, consisting of a DVD library case containing a booklet -
Virgin Broadband Set-up guide (Get going in a flash) - and a CD, labelled, Virgin Broadband Set-up CD.
What I did was what the company, presumably, wants and expects all new Virgin Broadband customers to do - read the book and use the CD to carry out the set up.
There was NOTHING provided to me - and doubtless, the same will be true for other customers - about how to do the set up manually.
And, for sure, there seemed to be things that the CD got to happen that I personally wouldn't know how to do manually (even though I'd be comfortable setting up an ADSL broadband router installation from scratch, having done that many times before).
The only step within the CD I didn't follow (you have the option to skip it) was to download and install the company' preferred security app - PCguard.
That's because I have very good anti-nasties software in place already.
There's AVG Free Edition, plus Spybot Search&Destroy (also free) and the paid-for version of Ad-Aware (Ad-Aware SE Pro). Oh and Hijack This is sitting around, too, to get me out of a hole if all the other protection fails.
As a broadband M user, the version of PCguard I could have installed for free had an anti-virus element, a dedicated firewall (I don't like third-party software firewalls) and a pop-up blocker.
There's also a chargeable version of the software package - PCguard Total - that comes free to broadband L and XL customers and which provides anti-spyware (in my view the most important element in protecting a PC today), parental control (not needed here) and "Identity Theft Protection".