anyone use netzero dial-up?

[sitlet]

if you dont, good. if yo do, i feel sorry for you. i have dsl at my house, but my mom just uses netzero since she doesnt use it that often anyway. well, the whole company is crap. you have to install their software for it to connect, and then you have a banner ad in internet explorer, and countless spyware/pop up programs that are installed with it. well, other than that, it has been working fine for about a year now. the other day, she said a message poped up from netzero telling her to downloaf the new connection software, since the old software would be shut down soon. she called me to make sure she should download it, and i told her to do it. well the new software doesnt work with her computer (windows me). the program will load up, but if you hit the connect button, it locks everything up, even windows. so i call netzero help line, and the whole phone system is automated. the only way i could talk to a human being was to say that i wanted to cancel my service. after wating about an hour on hold, i asked the rep to transfer me to customer service. she said that it would cost $1.95 a minute. i told her there is no way im paying for support on your software that messed up my computer. she told me i would either have to pay that, or add $10.00 a month on to the bill for free support. again i told her im not paying for support, and to talk to her supervisor. after about a half hour of arguing, they agreed to give me free support. i go through everything with the tech guy, and we cant figure it out, so he showed me how to re-install the old connection software. so i did and it worked fine for a day or two. then it automatically installed the new software again, that doesnt work. ok, enough ranting, you guys get the picture.

[jeex]

format & install xp

[adam]

Yeah I got sick of their service too. 5 mins into a session and the connection would just crap out on me. It was nothing but aggravation. I switched to Everyone's internet which is better and cheaper, and about as much as I can expect out of dial up. God I miss cable, but I just can't afford it right now.

[808smokey]

why bother with dialups at all??

Cable isn't that expensive

[adam]

When you have $65,000 in student loans, a house payment, and a car payment to make, the extra $30 a month definitely adds up.

[redwudz]

I use Netzero at my worksite that I pay for myself (Plantinum version) for $9.95US a month. About what it is worth. Compared to AOL which is $23.95US it is a bargain. I use it about 1-2 hours a month. Not defending Netzero, it constantly pisses me off by wanting to download probably useless updates and trying to tie up my one phone line. If you have inexpensive alternatives, definately use them. Where I am at, the next cheapest IP is about $20US a month. I have a cable modem at home, so dialup is really irritatiingly slow for me, no matter which IP used.

[piano632]

Not trying to plug anything, but try http://www.peoplepc.com
$10.95/mo. with no pop-ups, banner ads or hassles (so far).
It's what I'm currently using.

[rallynavvie]

why bother with dialups at all??

Cable isn't that expensive

There are still some of us who can't get any form of broadband so dial-up is all we have. Broadband would cost me about the same as I'm paying now for the ISP and the second phone line. It just simply isn't available here.

[sitlet]

i use DSL at my house, but my mom doesnt use the internet that often, so she doesnt want to pay an extra 30 bucks a month for broadband. im just going to find her another isp. ill try looking at people pc. netzero just plain sucks though. another thing i forgot to mention is that when you are connected, its almost always downloading video file advertisements, and that just sucks up the bandwith.

[Roundabout]

Try looking at www.freedomlist.com for another cheaper ISP. This is the best website I've found for sniffing out ISP's, and they have the most comprehensive list out there of all of them. Also, there are user comments and you can find out more about each by reading them.

A couple of years ago, I used access4less as an ISP, now they're even cheaper at $4.95/mo for unlimited access and includes a POP account. I can recommend them highly for good cheap service, though you'll have to either set up the dial-up networking yourself or use their software on their site. No garbage like NZ, just a nice, plain vanilla service that works good. Read the comments on Freedomlist about them (they're under the "cheap isp" heading).

There's lots of good cheap ISP's out there, you only have to find one that you like - and stick with it. AOL and NZ are crap, and a ripoff.

Hope that helps you out a little, it's a good place to start.

[stiltman]

The cheapest one I can think of is, a Highjacked one

Always worked for me least back before I got broadband