Thank you, everybody, for your helpful recommendations! I've passed a
summary on to my parents.
After a bit of web browsing, my personal recommendation to them is
Verizon DSL, which (since they use Verizon for phone service) offers
1m/384k with a lifetime guaranteed price of $18/month, which I figure is
about 20 times faster but only a little more expensive than the
$10/month they're paying NetZero right now. I already have Verizon DSL
3m/768k and am about 95% happy with it.
Allen wrote:
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.
My system (low-end Compaq) has a winmodem, but I bought Linuxant's
drivers for it. Now it has the functionality of a 56K faxmodem, and I
can use kppp's "mini-terminal" to get it to respond to all the standard
Hayes commands, including dialing. Future project is to figure out how
to use it to send and receive faxes, which of course is something my DSL
modem can't do. NetZero's software includes its own dialer, which isn't
dialing under Linux even though kppp now is. Their Linux software
doesn't seem to have been updated since about 2004, and its help screen
mentions Lindows a lot, which I think is a clue that they're not taking
Linux very seriously.
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.
Well, my parents use NetZero with WinXP and their latest customized IE,
and every few minutes it says "Internet Explorer has encountered a
problem and needs to shut down." Gets annoying fast. Latest problem
with them was they changed the name of their smtp server and didn't tell
anyone. (Fortunately my parents have me for tech support!)
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.
Both my parents and I switched from BestWeb a while ago, but before that
I'd tried all sorts of solutions for their constant disconnects without
success. Once my father called them to complain, and they swore it
wasn't their problem, but by an amazing coincidence the dropped
connections stopped right after that. Not for very long, though.
Thanks for all your advice!
Adam
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Jul 1 - Linux High Performance Computing
Aug 5 - TBD
Sept 2 - Linux and HDTV
