On Sun, 2009-06-21 at 18:28 -0400, Adam wrote: > Hi everybody! Your opinions wanted here... > > ... for a quality ISP with inexpensive unlimited local dialup access, > for my parents. Do any of you know anyone who's using dialup locally > and is either happy or unhappy with their ISP? This is the kind of > thing where it's easy to get a list of ISPs, but I'd really appreciate > anybody's first-hand (or second-hand) experience on their quality. > > BestWeb dialup was fine at first, but it got to the point where it was > disconnecting them about every five minutes. They switched to NetZero > which has the advantage of being cheap ($10/month unlimited), but > NetZero requires their own customized browser, and the Windows version > is impossibly buggy and I couldn't even get their Linux version to dial. > > So would anybody be able to point me toward (or away from!) an ISP that > offers dialup with most of the following? >
You write that Linux with Netzero won't even dial. This could be a modem issue. Is the modem software based (controllerless) or hardware (controller based)? Software modems, particularly Winmodems, are problematic under Linux. In my experience, it is impractical to keep Linux updated with dialup. I ran Fedora for a year with dialup. I ended up taking my flash drive to a library to get Linux updates. Before Linux, I used Windows ME. Most of the Windows updates were less than a few megabytes. (I believe the Windows updates are patches). Linux does updates by replacing the entire package instead of just patches. So most Linux updates are multiple-megabytes. You write that the Windows Netzero browser is impossibly buggy. My mother in NJ uses Netzero (with Windows XP). AFAICT, the customized browser is Internet Explorer. I use it when I visit. It doesn't seem that bad to me. She uses the PC mainly for email. Her Netzero service is acceptable. William Collier, who runs the Poughkeepsie ACM chapter, once had the founder and owner of Bestweb as a speaker. You might be able to get Bill to relay your Bestweb concerns to the owner. Also, Bill has been a long-time user of Bestweb. You might want to get his impression. I used AT&T Worldnet for five years. Their service was totally satisfactory. However, two years ago they raised their price from $18/month to $21/month at the same time Verizon started offering DSL for $15/month. An acquaintance has used Compuserve for several years with satisfactory service. She recently switched to Verizon DSL. _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jun 3 - TBD Jul 1 - TBD Aug 5 - TBD
