(I capitalized a couple of things to call your attention to them, I don't
mean to be yelling!)
As long as you don't mind lying--the FREEISPs I've used have a users
agreement where you have to agree that you are 18 to establish an account and
in some cases agree that no one under 18 will use the account. And you put
up with the ads (almost always). The majority of them gather information on
you as you are on line [beware the ones that say you must have (receiving)
cookies enabled!, however nothing says that you won't delete them
periodically for housekeeping purposes (oops, I forgot, we never have to
optimize our hard drives in Linux; but they don't have to know...), which
only slightly takes the edge off the problem]. BUT THE FIRST THING IS does
this ISP have a local access number? If you have to pay the phone company to
connect to the "freeisp" it could end up costing quite a bit. [TIP: check
the front of your phone book for the numbers of the exchanges that are in
your local calling area.]
The suggestion to get two or three freeisp accounts is a practical
necessity. As has been mentioned in newbie about a week ago, several have
suddenly ceased to exist.
Complain as you will about the AOL interface; I found the freeisp ads
worse. The one I signed up with that had an big flashing ad bar I canceled
immediately. Check out a number of them, they vary greatly. I am saddened
to see WorldSpy go (and I have their software to remove yet), for they didn't
have ads. This brings up the issue of Technical Support, which can be a
problem; removing the first WorldSpy software to install improved software
had me hand-removing Win98 registry entries! If I hadn't had good
instructions it could have been a serious problem.] Get recommendations of
good freeisps and, especially, backup your system before you install their
Windows software.
I WOULD LIKE RECOMMENDATIONS for good freeisp organizations in the United
States, especially ones that can be accessed via Linux. The less obnoxious
the ads the better. I would like to get AOL out of my pocket, too.
"1NOL and Freei have easy hacks to avoid using their software" Greg, I'm
definitely interested in details about this, besides it may be applicable to
other services as well.
-Gary-
In a message dated 8/13/2000 2:02:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< HEY!!!
Age shouldn't prevent you from getting this thing called a FREE internet
service provider account, they're all over the place--trick is to get
several so you're never cut off, and then tell your parents to follow the
directions I gave in another e-mail so they can cut their AOL bills in half!
There's absolutely no reason people (even those who view a computer as a
fancy typewriter--like me) should have to pay more than $20 a month for a
company to download all sorts of unkown garabage to your hard drive
(snip)
--Greg
>>
