I tried NetZero, AltaVista, Freei, iFreedom and FreePCNet. I couldn’t get NetZero to work. I liked Freei and have found it nearly always available on its Walnut Creek access number, which is local to me, here in Berkeley, CA.US. The Berkeley number didn’t work reliably. Freei accesses all newsgroups, as well as all the other amenities.
I signed up for FreeDSL, which is supposed to happen in April (US only), but its WinFire browser, available now with dial-up connection, doesn’t work just right with my system. They claim the problem is an old video driver. My question about FreeDSL, though, is whether Pacific Telephone isn’t going to bill me something, on its own, for my DSL usage – even while FreeDSL doesn’t, for the Inet connection to the DSL system. FreeDSL has to set up the other end of their system at Pac Bell’s central offices, so I assume they fund my service, in theory, through their overall deal with Pac Bell (in my case, both the infrastructure owner and my local phone-service company), but they say it’s up to me to check whether I have to pay anything additional to Pac Bell for DSL access. Pac Bell charges $49/mo for its own DSL service. BTW, you have to be close enough to a telco central office that has DSL equipment, in order to use such service. I think that’s within about 2 mi., which is true in my case. If you sign up with FreeDSL and give them your phone number and address, they check that.
Ray (Why is it so much work to get everthing free; and which Inet access includes lunch? )
I can’t find it, can you provide a link directly to the download page?
Also, how do these add popups work? You have to click a button every so often? Wouldn’t be too hard to write a program to simulate a mouse click on a certain button every now and then.
nightgirl44 . . in my opinion you can have a richer internet experience by learning to find your own content and resources rather than depending on AOL. they bring you much what THEY choose to bring you. put www.aol.com in your address bar and go there; youll find the news, download areas, chat, photo personals all accessible . . and FREE! check out www.techmall.com . . there youll find ALL the search engines, dictionary, thesaurus and more. check out . . www.ultimatewhitepages.com . . for mapquest/door to door directions/name/number search, reverse directory and more. if your not already using internet explorer; start now, set up a home page at yahoo or alta vista etc; you can customize your page to display the news you want, your stock quotes and portfolio value, calendar etc. you can still download AOL instant messenger to chat with your AOL friends . . theres also yahoo chat . . you can still have aol email plus your homepage email. if you use explorer, your favorite places are saved to your hard drive which is a plus.
so there are lots of ways to avoid paying AOL 26.95/month . . this ifreedom is ok; but since last friday im thrown off a lot mid mornings and late afternoons . . more people are signing up and thats bizzie time . . ill keep it for awhile and see if they add more access numbers. . i have free altavista as a back up. i dont know what your surf habits are . . but if disney channel/entertainment tonight/martha stewart stuff is what you like . . then stay with AOL . . they have been heading in the direction of “americas favorite place to be”(yak) for quite some time . . me no thanks, ill find my own content. despite the “megadeal.”
This works great on Juno, but when I tried it on NetZero, it flashed a message that said, “You can run from NetZero, but you can’t hide it”, then “self-destructed” in 7 seconds. Am I doing something wrong, or has NetZero read this thread and downloaded a patch on me?
Sorry I missed your question earlier. I connect to WorldSpy by first starting NetScape, then starting WorldSpy. There should be a file on your computer called VIVILINK.EXE–just run it. It’ll connect by itself once you do. One word of caution, though: If it looks like the program isn’t doing anything, give it another 30 to 60 seconds–it doesn’t give any “Please Wait” messages.
Programs like Hack-It send a message to windows telling it to Minimize This or Maximize That. Evidently, the Juno client monitors for any HIDE or MINIMIZE messages from Windows, then reacts accordingly. It would only take two or three lines of code to override your attempt to “Hack-it”.
I’m using the AltaVista free service. I’ve not had much trouble with it, especially since they updated everything and made it all much more pleasing to the eye. I don’t know about the other free services, but my banner is relatively small on my screen. That’s because I have my screen resolution at 1024x768. Anything smaller, and the banner becomes unmanagable, i.e., the banner takes up more room than the browser toolbar.
I’ve had a few problems, nothing major tho. And I’ve always been able to get on. I’m not sure the problems I’ve had were because of AV or because of the webcam I bought, tho. That’s when I had problems. It would just disconnect on me. There are 3 local numbers here, which I thought strange, this being Waco and all. But now, i barely even notice the banner, and occasionally there is actually a few ads that i click on…
my 2 cents.
I used NetZero for a while too. Don’t make my mistake.
That stupid “You can run, but you can’t hide” happens all the bloody time, and I’m not even using Hack it or anything else. Further, it takes about five minutes to load the program. If it decides to quit, it unloads, and you have to reload it. Another five minutes. Plus, after you finally get ceonnected, and start surfing, after a few minutes it’ll jump to their web site. If you don’t let it totally load, it’ll think you’re avoiding security and disconnect and unload again. Kludgy, pushy piece of crap.
After reading the posts in this thread, I decided to try Alta Vista - so far so good. Yes, there is a banner bar that gets in the way a little but you can move it around as needed and heck, it’s completely free.
Sure beats spending $ to get on the internet - even the call is free.
I would like to mention Freeweb (www.freewwweb.com). I have been using them for about six months and they seems just great- no obnoxious ad windows or time-outs- I get the same look and feel as I had from a “real” paid-for ISP. Looing at their map of access numbers, it looks like they’re all over the USA & our frozen neighbor to the north. I recently got an email from them asking me if I would be interested in free dsl. Of course I said “yes, tell me more”, but not specifics as of yet.
On the other hand, I was recently in Fresno, CA, and tried to install it for a friend (no download needed- just sign up & create a dial up GUI), but couldn’t sign him up to save my soul- and I’m supposed to be a LAN/WAN admin!
Maybe it was because I was using my credit card for his account (they say on their web site that they won’t charge you- the card is needed for age verification only) or some other nit-pickitty reason, but I didn’t spend all day on it so the problem went unresolved.
Has anybody ever tried them out? I am wondering if anybody has had this problem and what they did to solve it.
Also, you can pay for Inet service and still not get taken to the cleaners. I was with both Erols & Zzapp (regional to DC) and they were both top quality ISPs and both cost about the same, $12-$13 monthly. That’s a whole lot better than $26.95! I dropped Zzapp only because Freeweb was working so well.
I wholeheartedly agree with bda about aol. Cruising the net with aol is like driving in one of those driver’s ed cars with an instructor. You may have your hands on the wheel, and it may look and feel like you’re driving, but you don’t really get the full experience & start learning until somebody stops holding your hand.
My brother built this computer for me, and set me up with IE. Tried going that route, but got the same problem: it’s not finding a phone number. Maybe I’ll just have to reinstall.
Generally, I agree with the disparaging comments about NetZero. When I get WorldSpy (or one of the other mentioned ISPs) to work, I’ll delete it.
Here’s a Juno update: when I connect to the web, a timer starts. When that timer reaches 3 hours, it disconnects without warning. Dialing and loading the home page usually takes a minute or so, rarely longer than two minutes. Wait until everything’s finished loading before running hack-it on the banner, otherwise the ads will overlay the entire page every 30 seconds. It sometimes hesitates, which can be bothersome when I switch back to e-mail. Overall, it’s a smoother-running ISP than NetZero.
to get rid of the NetZero banner delete or rename the net.dll file in the NetZero directory. It will no longer show the ads but will leave two processes running after you close the connection. Just hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill chkras and znet (maybe…I’m not at home so I can’t check).
Did you know that there is some clause in the terms that says we agree not to alter or defeat the Netzero software? If we do, I think they’re allowed to charge some outragous amount for their service. Exactly how they find this out is beyond me…
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