Netzero No Longer Free Beginning Jan. 1st

[Harry]

I was just told that Netzero will no longer be free beginning January 1st. Is this true? I better hurry up and switch to Winfire.

[RayH]

They're only giving the first 40 hours/mo free. To connect for the rest of the month, it'll cost $9.95!

[Harry]

That's as good as not being free to me. There are some days on weekends that I have been on the net 18 hours straight. So Netzero will be impossible with me.

[uhhuh]

Just their way of saying "Merry Christmas"

[Omletteboy]

Free internet is loosing its appeal to companies as advertisements can't generate enough revenue to sustain the operation. Altavsita, Netzero.... the trend continues.

[RayH]

I've been using free internet providers for two years. I'm still using them. A poor business model doesn't mean poor service!

[Xayd]

Heh, imagine that! Can't make money by giving stuff away for free, and advertising pyramid schemes don't make money either, who woulda thunk it?

But yeah, charging for something you still have to look at banners in to use is gonna go over like a fart in church.

Xayd

[Harry]

I wonder if there will be some way to keep tabs on how many hours you have used Netzero.

[RayH]

Hell ya, they can keep track of the time. Be sure you have the units they use to track. One minute or so increments. What happens if you get dropped very quickly?

Since it's a free service, maybe some people will know how to make multiple profiles.........

[glc]

That wont work either - its 40 hours "per family unit".

It's time to spend $14.95 a month for ad-free quality service, folks.

[Gintaras]

I've used Freewwweb for ~ a year without a banners, very good connection.
Now I got Earthlink[$19.95] that's going south too- I complained already, and got a month free.

I'm thinking now and considering $40 cable.
2x more than 56K, but when it comes to downloading stull- Napster, etc, it won't be just 2x faster, it will tens of X-faster.

@ work we have Verizon DSL- which is VERY s**tty- d/l get sometimes much faster than 56k[Napster], but page load slower than @ home my 56k.
My friend had DSL for a few weeks and dropped, altough he lived very close to Telco.

[Xayd]

If you go with DSL, there are enough providers outside of the Telcos now to get a much better deal. Search http://www.dslreports.com , and find one with guaranteed bandwidth in your area.

Cable is heavily dependant on the provider. There are no bandwidth guarantees on cable, and if they oversell (as they're more apt to do, considering that there are no single-line limitations between you and the switch), you get screwed.

Xayd

[RayH]

Make sure you have at least 128 MB of RAM with DSL. RAM still makes a difference. I added the additional 64 MB of RAM to my brother's computer (and turned off everything that was necessary), now his DSL is acting properly.

With just 64 MB of shared RAM, his DSL sometimes wasn't any faster than my free dialups!

The speed of your DSL may be the same, phone company or third party, as they are just leasing space from the phone company.

[slewis1972]

Hi,

I live in the Uk and a load of free internet service providers have gone out of business. There is still loads that offer for a specific number of hours you pay a certain amount. Thank god though Cable Modems have started and we can pay from £15 or £25 per month for 24/7 access with rental of the CM, with bandwidth upto 512/256kps. This though is with a cable operator as BT charge £40-50 per month for ASDL.

Scott

[hmagnet]

Netzeros main problem is there spending to much money on advertising. Every time I watch a NBA game I always see "netzero at the half", no wonder their losing money. Besides I knew it would all come to an end one day, who in their right mind clicks on ad banners anyway.

[Omletteboy]

Pending on the area you live in, cable speed is usually better than DSL even though you share connection with people. Where I live we compare speed between @home and dsl. I can constantly beat the dsl connection so it really depend on the area you live in and how good the backbone of the provider is. Ask questions and do comparisons before you decide which high speed connection to go with.

[Jenni]

Hmmm, I am a Netzero user, and I didn't even know that they were gonna start charging. O well, don't use them that much anyway. Just a ? though, how are they gonna charge me? I didn't give them a CC number or anything, don't even remember giving them my address.

My local cable co. is about to start offering cable in my area. I'm thinking of switching to them, but my cousin has been trying to talk me out of it because of the sharing thing. But like I told him, how many people are gonna have to be on at the same time to bog me down to the 26.4k connection that I am limited to now because of bad phone lines? Speaking of which, is there a way to get the phone co. to come out and check for line noise and the like? I know it isn't my modem because I have had 3 different modems, including a Supra Express that is consistent at 46-49k everywhere else. 26.4k is what I always get. No higher, and no lower.

[Harry]

Jenni,
There is no way in hell I could ever use a 33.3 modem or slower with a full browser. It's just impossible like about one to two minutes getting up a Web site. I would strongly urge you to use a text only browser like Lynx or Wannabe. Oops, I think Wannabe is just for my Mac. Or if a local library has a connection, call into them and connect to the net that way. My local library was the way I first got connected to the net about 4 years ago.

[Jenni]

I guess maybe I'm lucky, because mine never takes anywhere near that long to load pages, unless they have a huge amount of little pictures on them. Most sites load in a few seconds (although now that I think about it, they are probably all in my cache anyway).

[Omletteboy]

Hey Jenni,

Yes you can ask your telco to test your line for noise. But the connection speed displayed by windows could be wrong, try to download a 1 meg file and see how many kb/s you get. If you get high 3 to low 4, you are getting pretty good 56k connection.

[RayH]

If cable is being offered try it! You might like it. My daughter has cable, it seems just fine. I would be leary of cable for me, as I live in a densely populated area...San Francisco.

I don't like or trust AT&T. I waiting for the second cable company, RCN, to get its wiring in. I might go with them, if I don't get DSL before then. I'm all of three blocks from the phone company.

I'm using cheapskate connection right now.......

[Harry]

Omelette Boy,

I think you are a little bit off on your modem speed calculations. On my 28.8 modem on my old Mac, I get about 3.3K downloads at the best speeds. On my USR modem on the PC, I get 5.5K downloads with ISPs that don't have ads running. With ads running like on Netzero, it reduces the speed by about .5 to .7k. I get slower speeds too but that has to do with traffic.

As far as I am concerned, I am anxiously waiting for my free dsl. I waste a lot of time going from Web site to Web site (or making slow downloads). I have a whole slew of about 60 Web sites I visit and post to almost daily and thank God Survivor and BigBrother are over with. I probably made 1,000 posts on those shows alone and there were times during those days where I was walking around like a zombie so faint from lack of sleep staying up till 4 a.m. night after night. I need to cut back on time and I'm hoping DSL will help. There was hardly ever a day where I stayed up past 11 until I got into computers. It's ruined my whole life and a computer friend of mine somewhat older than me who I much admired and respected recently died of a stroke. In fact, RayH, you may have read his obituary since it was in your local newspaper several weeks ago. I couldn't believe that. But is it any wonder when living day after day with no sleep.

[Edited by Harry on 01-05-2001 at 02:34 AM]

[RayH]

Harry, I'd like to know what you will make of the Winfire "toolbar". The cost of the equipment doesn't bother me particularly, but I'd like to know what that bar is all about!

[RayH]

As Harry started this post, Winfire appears to be a free DSL, but you have to pop for the equipment. The more you want to pay, the faster the service.

A couple of free ISP, with apparently no monthly limits, are: NO CHARGE and FREELANE and NO CHARGE.com (can't get both to light up)

Jenni I haven't tried No Charge, which is supposed to have no ad banners, but I have tried Freelane. It works. I hope it's in your service area!

But if Winfire is in your area, maybe a one time fee for equipment may not be a bad alternative!



[Edited by RayH on 01-06-2001 at 08:53 AM]

[Harry]

Yeah, you have to pop for the equipment which they want $200 for the modem plus $27 for their Installer CD. You can cut the modem price down as I did by purchasing one somewhere else. After researching for sometime, I decided that a Westell Ethernet modem might not be a bad bet and got one for $50. I even noticed a guy on the net who was giving one away free but I saw his post too late. I still had to pay for their Installer CD. I've also been told that there are ways to run their system without using their toolbar and that by not using their toolbar you can up your speed to something like 300Kbps instead of the 144kbps that they limit you to on the free system. At $20 per month which is like a standard ISP price, they will give you ad free dsl plus about 300kbps download. I registered with them many many months ago but didn't actually phone in my signup until I heard about this Netzero change so it will probably be several weeks before I get service. If it doesn't work out, I won't have lost too much and can probably sell the modem.

[Den]

I have had Winfire as a backup isp for quite a while and there toolbar is the least obtrusive of the free isp crap that I have seen. The toolbar can be docked anywhere on your screen. I had there bar docked inside my desktop toolbar at the bottom of the screen. It can be sized down to about 4 inches long and one half inch wide and a little scrolling window about one third that size inside there bar. When off the net just close it and it's gone. Now I used the word had because Winfire has notified me that they are now ready to hook me up. About 3 weeks ago they said it would be 3 to 5 weeks yet and I have recieved 3 e-mails keeping me updated as to how it's going. They are now waiting for the phone co. I was also told that I must delete there old toolbar because I will get a new one on a cd when I recieve my internal modem. Now I am hoping that the new toolbar is not different than the old one. If it's the same I will be very pleased with that part. I have not heard from anyone that has been activated and has the new toolbar.

[Jenni]

Omletteboy, my d/l's are usually around 2.5 to 2.7 kb/s. I know the connection speed reported by Windows can't be too far off, as the modem I'm using now is a 33.6 Supra Express that I picked up for $10 to take the "winmodem" load off of my lowly Pentium 200. Plus, everything reports it as 26.4, AOL, Laplink, DUN...and, it has been 26.4 on 3 different computers, this one, my laptop, and my dad's that has a 56k Supra Express that has averaged 47k connections at 3 other places.

[RayH]

Jenni, if your computer uses SDRAM, you may be better off getting more MBs and using a 56K WinModem than a 33.6 ISA!

[glc]

Ray - absolutely NOT - her line obviously doesn't support 56K. The Supra Express is one of the finest modems ever made - it's 100% hardware based and exacts no toll on the CPU at all.

Jenni - rural phone lines notoriously suck. Not only that, they may be using "pair gain" digital splitting technology to avoid running new lines - by definition, they are limited to 28.8. Look at cable or 2 way satellite (Starband from Dish Network - NOT DirecPC).

[RayH]

GLC...stand corrected. I just thought the connection was a bit slow due to the modem...