Looking for advice on who to go with as my ISP? My 6 months free with AOL is over and the best they can do for basic dial up(unlimited time) is $19.95/month. We were with MSN and that was a better experience than AOL. We don't need anything fancy just unlimited dial up with e-mail service. I'm sick of the pop-ups and getting kicked off and paying more for it. TIA.
You can't beat broadband, whether you like cable service, or DSL thru your phone company, but you pay $40-$50 month. For dial-up, I had AOL for a couple years and hated it. Switched to Earthlink and it was like night and day. Never a busy signal, never got disconnected. But they are about the same $$ as AOL. There are some "free" options out there. Try going to www.google.com and searching for "free interenet". See what comes up. NetZero is pretty cheap, but I don't know how the service rates. I personally think using this board would be a pain with a dial up connection, but it's all in what you are used to, and can tolerate.
NetZero??? :moonu: They are my dial-up backup during the (now) unlikely event of 'Cable Crash' because it's free. Very Slowwwwwwwww
I'm finally getting back on the broadband wagon. Cableguy is coming Friday to hook me up. I got what I think is a really good deal. Getting Earthlink cable via TimeWarner for $30/month for the first six months, then its $42/month after, plus no contract either. AND... I'm getting a $75 BestBuy giftcard because I signed up through BestBuy. I think thats a pretty good deal.
Juno = $9.95 month.... (I think they are owned by NetZERO) I have been with them for 3 months and have not had a problem yet. It is not "unlimited" but it is not "limited" either. I think they don't want you to stay on-line for 14 hours straigt at a time.... I can't justify the price of Broadband at this time although it would be nice....
I'm not surprised at your comments on NetZero. Free usually means there's a different price to be paid. I have never tried any of the low-buck ISP's. I went from AOL to Earthlink, to cable modem service for maybe 1 1/2 yrs now. Broadband makes surfing, etc, actually enjoyable...imagine that! I get mine for $39.95 since I also have their cable tv service. That's good for a $5/month discount.
Time is a very dear price to pay - not to mention that 'annoying' advertisement bar that is permanently affixed to your browser while logged on. But, it solves the withdrawal pains (at least temporarily) when I cannot log on here
If you just want dial up AT&T is good. For dial up service you will either be going through AT&T or Sprint no matter who you buy it from. I figured why no go straight to the source. If anyone has the best equipment its the phone company. AT&T has been good to me. broadband is just not worth $50-80 a month unless your downloading new movies and selling bootlegs to pay for it. Matt uzzled: FYI Earthlink is MSN. I loved Earthlink until they sold out to MSN and basically got $200 buck for selling my account. [back when MSN offered all that cash for customers] EL has 4-5 good number in my area and then after the sell out, They had 3 numbers which are the same numbers my Mom's MSN used.
i remember when juno and netzero were free. AND faster than AOL...like just about everything else. i'd go with earthlink, i used them for about 2 years. i've had broadband for three, though, so who knows if their service is still as good.
I've got Netzero and don't have any problems. It's $9.95/month and I hook up at 45333bps (not to bad for dial up). The guy next door has AOL and can barely get 26000bps. I've got Comcast cable extended basic and it's $44 and they want another $40 for cable internet access, that's crazy. Hoping they get some competition someday Of course if I would just start my own business I could write it off Of course right now I'm at work using out T-1 connection, it's a little quicker than homeo No: Take care,
Bruce, Doesn't that speed of light web at work ruin your fun at home??? I remember when dial up was fine for just about anything. Until I got to play on a T1 8 hrs a day. Man did my computer at home collect dust. Connect speed doesn't matter too much. Some modems just don't post as high [or will if you tweak it, but that number is kind of null], my external says 115000 when my usb will say 26.4 or 28.8 but neither of them will go over 3.5k download speed for very long. People close to town get 5k steady. Matt uzzled:
if you use a 56k modem never pay more than $10! there are a lot of servers out there under that. a lot of them use the same "trunk" or dial up numbers. so you kinda have to watch the most popular ones, like juno/netzero where a lot of people use them, slows the server down. i am on wal-marts service, not too bad but i really dont use the net on high use times so i get a pretty good connect rate [for 56k]. dsl/ broadband is the way to go if you download a lot of stuff. but if you dont mind the wait and dont want to pay the price just go with the cheapest one you can find for your area. by the way, if you "mac" you are pretty much stuck with the more expensive servers like earthlink unless you happen to fall into one that does both pc and mac modems. :ball:
As long as its a 56k Modem, it will be supported by the servers... its their software that you don't need that isn't compatable. I've got Cable through Adelphia, yah its 40/month, DSL is 34.95 and half as fast. Plus they don't offer the different levels like they used to, and when they DID in order to get a comparable speed to the cable it was ~80 a month. My arguement with Adelphia... poor reliability (we're in the middle of a server platform change and some bandwidth throttling changes so I am being patient)... capping their speeds (now its 2000 down 256 up, before the platform change I was getting ~5700 down and 128 capped upload).
