right my area has just been activated in terms of broad band

I assume you mean ADSL, as opposed to cable modem ?

How good or bad is freeserve ?

They are an okish ISP. If I were you I would also consider http://plus.net/ who are also another half decent low cost ISP.

What kind of speed should i expect from broadband as freeserve say 512kbps but i am sure i will never get this.

In my experience with ADSL you should expect to see 512kbps most of the time. Your ADSL connection is contended (i.e. you share bandwidth with other users), but that is how most of the Internet works anyway. In the UK the consumer targeted BT supplied ADSL (which is what Freeserve and PlusNet are selling you) is contended at a 50:1 ratio. This means that for every 50 users on your exchange there is at least 512kbps of bandwidth between you and the ISP.

If it was a simple as that though ADSL would suck, as one user on the exchange streaming P2P downloads all day would leave everyone fighting for bandwidth. So exchanges tend to have more like 12,288kbps shared between 1,200 users (still a 50:1 ratio) so then it takes more "greedy" people to have a noticable effect.

Contention in the UK seems to work fairly well at the moment. All the people who I have come across who said they were suffering from the effects of contention turned out to have faults on their lines.

Any reccomdations on modems etc or should i go for the one that freeserve offers

Get a router instead. ADSL routers start at 50 quid nowadays, so it is silly not to.

For example:

http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&stockcode=334-010-0020&ad=WS

N.B. I haven't used that router myself, but it seems to a have a very comprehensive feature set.

If you chose plusnet they will sell you a router with the line.

If you buy a router, make sure it is a router with an ADSL modem built-in. There are lots of routers on the shelves of PCWorld and the like which are described as "broadband routers". This is not what you want, they are design for routing between two Ethernet networks (usually used to connect a network of machines to a cable modem).