I don’t want to pay for broadband, so I’m getting dialup. Those of you who use it, what service do you have, how much do you pay, and most importantly, how would you rate your service?
Thanks in advance.
I’m using Earthlink’s free six month trial period I got with my computer from Dell and I’m pretty pleased with it. I don’t know how much it actually costs but if it’s around $15 or so, I’ll probably upgrade to it instead of the shoddy NetZero service I was using on my old computer.
I have AOL. It’s ok but sometimes gets really slow and I get booted off every now and then.
The other thing is that with dial-up forget about watching video clips on the internet.
RATING: “It’s Ok I guess”
Eh? Oh, well!
Rating: So-so. Fine most of the time, for a dial-up. Refuses to connect at any reasonable percentage of the modem’s maximum speed (best is about 38% of max.). Occasionally slows to forget-it speed (not an artifact of the site; it happens to all sites simultaneously). Once every two weeks or so, it gets on a “carrier drop” jag for a few hours. (But even when working at its best, forget streaming anything, or downloading any file bigger than about 2.5 MB.)
I just cancelled my dial-up today, after the cable internet got hooked up - first time I’ve had it.
I had msn as an ISP.
Do not go with them. It was $21.95/month for unlimited dial-up service. and there are other services out there for less that give you the same service. Now I’m getting ready to (hopefully) uninstall the MSN explorer software and, in an idea world, be rid of them forever.
You don’t get anything special with them. It’s just dial-up access.
“Just dialup” is all I really want right now. I’m not looking for anything special.
Aesiron, I’ve been looking at Netzero. What didn’t you like about them?
Well, to be fair, the biggest issue I had with it – its sluggishness – may have been with the computer I was using it with and not NetZero itself and the other two complaints – that it kicked you every three hours and that it took up space on the taskbar instead of completely minimizing like Earthlink – are fairly minor overall.
I don’t have any issue at all with Earthlink though.
AT&T here. Speed varies from 31.2 ~ 44 depending on time of day, phase of moon, and how many starlings are on the lines. 
$15 per month. Other than taking two and a half forevers to send or receive large files, it’s OK.
I use toast.net which comes in at $14.95 for 150 hours/month.
It’s decent. I’ve used AOHell and Earthlink, neither of which impressed me more for the lack of customer service rather than the actual service.
I do have times where keeping a connection is difficult and it will automatically disconnect after three hours, but I just click back on and I’m ready to go.
I just renewed my subscription to MSN unlimited narrowband service. It’s $190 a year ($15.83/mo) but I have to pay the whole year in advance. I was thinking of switching to Netzero or other $10 a month service so I d’loaded NZ’s free service to try it but the software changed my search engine to theirs when I installed it and that pissed me off so I uninstalled it and decided to stay with the devil I know.
I’ve had this service for five years or so and have only had trouble getting online a few times and never got a busy signal; there are 4 or 5 numbers I can use in my area. With my new computer I connect at 45.296 Kbps pretty much every time. We had heavy rain here yesterday so it’s down to 41 or 44 until things dry out; of course that’s not MSN’s fault. Files d’load pretty quickly and I don’t get kicked of very often and I regularly stay online for over three or four hours straight. In fact, I haven’t had the disconnect window come up since I’ve been using the new computer, about 5 weeks. When I need to ask a tech question of them I just email it or use live online tech support (haven’t used either in a while, so don’t know how they are now) with fair results. The main thing I like about MSN is that they leave me alone.
We use Surfbest. It’s only $12.50/month and it works just as well as any other dial-up (which is to say everything that’s already been said before: “eh”). It’s an absolutely no-frills ISP; no browser or anything… I just use Firefox. And it’s unlimited, by the way.
I use Highstream. Unlimited time for $8.95 a month. That’s about the cheapest I was able to find. Works ok. If you sign up with them tell them I sent you, I’ll get a free month!