Argh!
Now I realise one of the main reasons why I don't have a mobile phone - I know that I'll get screwed over whatever option I choose. So far I've decided that for the purpose I've bought the phone the cheaper the cost of international texts, the better - nothing else really matters.
Cheapest I've found is 02 at 12p a message after you've paid them some money to something (actually you can't for France, you have to be a business user... or something else which I doubt I'll be), or 16p without. T-Mobile's is high at 20p, so they loose. Orange... hehe, this took a long time to find, but it looks like it's 15p. But Orange do some calling abroad inclusive minutes thing... where if you buy some minutes up front they'll give you 20% extra on top.
Vodafone seem to be another company who don't really want to tell me the cost of international texts - in fact they don't seem to want to sell me a phone, they are more interested in showing me how to play Space Invaders. Well they do a cunning international saving thing as well.. it seems to be good at telling me how much I'll save, but not how much the cost without the saving would be! I give up. Their UK to UK texting is 12p... which is higher than O2 to UK-2-UK. So I'll just have to guess that Vodafone lose - put information not bull crap on your website guys.
So O2 seem to be well in the running :) But which option to pick... grrrr... well I don't intend to make calls on it really - well not that many, I've managed for so long to avoid this without too many problems. It's the incomming calls people moan like f*ck about :) So Pay as you Go would seem like a good idea. But I know I'm going to end up making calls :( Oh! If I'm on PaYG and only on PaYG I can pay 5 quid and get texts down to 10p. Cunning. Argh! Too much information. Now their websites all broken. Poo. Looks like I'll be carrying on with my research tomorrow.