Best dial-up performer

[Omega Man]

We've had nothing but problems with MSN. I want to switch to another dial-up provider, and maybe try one of the speeded up versions such as net zero plus. Has anyone here had any experience with these?

On another subject, what is an M.-card? And Will it work on an old laptop computer with a 90MHz processor?

[SARGE]

http://thelist.internet.com/misc/usa/

[glc]

The "speeded up" versions you mention are not what they sound like. The connection is no faster, all they do is cache a bunch of stuff on YOUR hard drive to make web pages SEEM to load faster. File downloads are not one bit faster.

The best national dialup in my opinion is Earthlink, but do not install their software, just do a standard dialup networking setup and use your choice of applications.

[GaryRouth]

Omega - not sure what you mean by an "M.-card"? - are you referring to the credit card size devices that plug into the PCMCIA slots on the side of the laptop? [these are also sometimes called "PC-cards"]?

A 90mhz laptop probably doesn't have much graphics acceleration, or very much memory - so if you're thinking of a PC-card modem, the performance will still be a bit slowed by the overall system's age. If you have a DSL or cable connection, it will load Ok: just don't expect it to flash up onto the screen like a Pentium 4 with 512mb of DDR memory and a recent video card.

My experience with older laptops and dialups is that you should try to add as much RAM as the motherboard will allow. The graphics in laptops often share system memory, & if there's more to go around, there's a spot to stuff webpages more quickly. The PC-card modems can be quirky, and can sometimes connect OK, but then re-train down to slower speeds if they find too much noise on the line (this can happen to any modem, really: It's just more painful when the connection and the system aren't that fast to begin with). Another factor in quality of connections is the initialization string for the modem that your ISP connection uses. Sometimes finding a string that matches your model more closely can help a lot.

Like glc, I like Earthlink too (I also recommend not using the Earthlink software). Another nice thing about Earthlink is that it works well with Linux.
. . . Gary

[Blue_Gundam2002]

I've tried alot of different dail-up providers (msn, aol, gateway, yahoo, earthlink, netzero, and some local crap.) So far I have found that Net Zero platinum is the best. Always connects, connects in under a minute, I've never gotten cut off, great customer support. And its only 9.99 a month, can't beat that.