----- Original Message -----
From: Randolph Fritz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I've decided to get a new ISP... Who do people suggest...this time? :)
Randolph, you might give these a look. At least for a lark.
> > The big news in the realm of freebies this week was Juno's
> > announcement that it has entered the free Net access arena. Juno, a
> > pioneer among free E-mail service providers, rolled out an ambitious
> > service recently that offers free Net access, available nationwide
> > (in the U.S.). Like other free Net access providers, this service is
> > ad-supported. Hopefully, more major players will embrace the free Net
> > access model and the day will eventually come when nobody pays to
> > access the Net!
> >
> > Sign up for Juno's free Net service (as well as their free E-mail
> > service) at:
> > http://www.juno.com
>
>
> Thanks Larry, I wanted to write myself and let you all know that I signed
> up for Alta Vista's free Net service which can be downloaded at...
>
> http://www.1stup.com
>
> It did take me several tries over a period of several days to get it
> downloaded, set up and running. The problems appear to have been all >my
fault though and after a couple of calls to their tech support people
>someone finally asked if I was entering my log-in name all in small letters
>which I wasn't. The first couple of tries they weren't able to log in to
their >system to see what I might have been doing wrong and they asked me to
>call back. Anyway, the suggestion seems to have fixed whatever >problems I
was having and now the thing works great.
>
> I never had to wait more than a minute or so for tech support. I've never
> not been able to log on and once on, I've never been cut off. Not even
>on a 17 MGB unattended download. Pretty nice!
>
>They run their add banner in what they call a Portal that's about an inch
> high and mine runs a crossed the top of the screen. You can move it
>or you can close 1/2 of it. The half you can close though gives >continual
weather, news, stock mkt., etc., updates that I kind of enjoy
>so I leave it open. Along the bottom of the portal are several dropdown
>menus with shortcuts to more interesting sites. All in all it's not to
bad. >Since getting it to work I've pretty much split up my time between it
and >my regular ISP and really haven't found the ad banner to be much of a
>problem.
>
> Re: the bandwidth question, I read an article recently that indicated that
> on the average we spend about 17 hours a month surfing the Net and about
70%
> (11.9 hours with a 56.6K modem) of that time, while we are viewing what
> we've already downloaded, nothing is being downloaded. It occurs to me
that
> even with my 28.8K speed modem there's still plenty of time left for a few
> ads to download.
JM
