My roomates and I just dropped AOL, and have moved on to Kmart/Yahoo’s Bluelight ISP service. I must admit that since I only used AOL for the internet, that has been a very good move. The only problem that arises, which I’m sure I’ll learn to deal with, is that they force you to watch advertisements while you surf the net.
I also dl’d freeI.net’s isp thingy, and find that both do an fine job of connecting me at roughly 50k and keeping me online. I still use AOL’s IM so I can talk to my pals, and have more email addresses to shake a stick at.
Anyone else use these ISP’s or know of other free ISPs? Anyone have suggestions on how to get around looking at the advertisements? Anyone experiencing problems that I might be able to avoid? For awhile AOL would open up everytime I’d use Bluelight, but found out that I set AOL to be my default browser, and did a little control panel changing to get it back to normal.
“People must think it must be fun to be a super genuis,
But they don’t realize how hard it is
to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
– Calvin and Hobbes
(__) /
I mentioned Freewwweb already sveral times in past incarnations of this thread. If the search engine worked I would dig up links to the other threads (there were several threads wherein a bunch of free ISPs were mentioned). I have had Freewwweb since last July and it’s the best for the reasons Shadow mentioned.
I have setup a few as backups to my regular ISP. The survive you get will depend on what the free ISP has setup in your area.
For example: how many modems per user and what the modem connection speed is for your area. These may differ a great deal so when someone says abc response stinks - it may be good for you.
I have had AltaVista since it became available outside of Boston. At first dialing in was a major problem and the response time was very poor. It has since gotten much better.
NetZero still has not gotten squared away here so gets a Zero rating. Again - it might be fine in your area.
Juno was iffy for me. I’m one of the few who do not like their mailer program.
I just setup freewwweb to see if it was real and yep no ads and connected on the first shot. I can mail out but its not connecting to the server for mail in. News is not finding the server either. On setup freewwweb will download Netscape if you want it. If you have NS already it will create a new profile for freewwweb. It looks like they have setup an autodial-out button off NS, which is nice. The setup program takes care of setting up NS news and mail server fields, which is nice. For me this is very nice as I normally use NS mail = Messenger. Usually with these free things mail is a bit clumsy, as you have to use some mailer which is not as nice as NS’s.
Freewwweb is for 98, 95 and Mac
Freeweeb setup my TCP/IP settings for their dialup connection with fixed Primary and Secondary DNS’s so I’m a node on the network with them - unlike any others I seen. Interesting. If this will work with NT I could setup a router and get all my machines on for free - again very unlike any other free service, as all the others are some proprietary interface like AOL’s.
It looks like Freewwweb is wide open and free. The only other free guys I’ve heard about with no ads require you to give mega data about yourself. They then make money off your data. What is the angle with Freewwweb? They are not even sneaking an ad into the NS default window.
If anyone knows these guys and what they are up to you might post it.
Freewwweb has no angle as far as I am aware. I connect sucessfully 99% of the time, and the other 1% it never takes more than 5 tries. I get no spam or junk from them. Check out the site, IIRC there is a link for those of you who want to know their philosophy, etc.
The 16M download is needed if you want Netscape Communicator. If you already have a browser, just register as a member, create a dial up connection, plug in the phone number listed on their site, configure the TCP/IP (not hard at all- they give you step-by-step), and you can dial right in.
This is the only catch I see on their site:
I don’t have them as my home page and I have been connecting just fine. Even if this was a requirement, it is no inconvenience IMO.
I have found that there are programs such as “Modem Booster” that claim to be able to take your 56k modem and actually make it faster. They somehow configure your DUN so that you can up your connection quite dramatically. I know there are other programs that claim to do this, but I have found that they don’t work with Bluelight or FreeInet(which I have since deleted) because they have a seperate program that connects you to a server. Will programs such as “Modem Booster” be able to work with this?
There is also another service that gives you free internet service through your cable, which I assume is provided by the same company that provided freewwweb company, called freexdsl. Makes you wonder how they get away with it, since my cable company offers the same service for $20 a month.
How can they do this since they aren’t making you look at ads and aren’t asking for tremendous amounts of information?
“People must think it must be fun to be a super genuis,
But they don’t realize how hard it is
to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
– Calvin and Hobbes
(__) /
to answer my own question: Modem Booster does work with Freewwweb. Doesn’t help a lot, but it works.
“People must think it must be fun to be a super genuis,
But they don’t realize how hard it is
to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
– Calvin and Hobbes
(__) /
I use Netzero, cowgod. You do get a banner ad, but it’s really easy to ignore and I’ve gotten the hang of keeping it out of my way at all times. I hardly ever have connection trouble, although lately it’s been booting me more than often. But if you ever get tired of what you’re using, you might try it out at least.
For anyone trying Freewwweb:
Their setup program did not setup incoming mail correctly. The setup program set
the pop server to freeweb.com. I reset it to pop.freewwweb.com and its connecting
to the server now. To change the Netscape settings:
Edit, Preferences, Mail & Newsgroups, Mail Servers, Edit. Add pop to freewwweb.com for pop.freewwweb.com
My ISP must be doing some maintenance this morning as the modem is not connecting. So I’m in on Freewwweb. It looks like their catch is instead of the banner window they require you have their home page as your default home page. Someone has mentioned this above. Its the first time I’ve seen this approach. The home page vs banner adds is a less irritating way to go for me. I’ve gotten used to moving the banner around but Freewwweb is even more seamless.
Mail works fine but I can’t connect to their news server. Anyone out there using
Freewwweb and have news working?
BTW: I’m connected at 28.8 as I’m on the laptop and that’s the max for the card.
Anyone connecting higher.
Also tried to dial in with the Linux box but it would not connect. I got logged in, got the IP but it then disconnected with Unsupported protocol error 0xc029 then LCP terminated.
95% of the time I connect at 33.6, and if I don’t connect at that speed I hang up and reconnect. 28.8 is fine with me, but when I’ve wanted to the higher speed connection, I always get 33.6 on the 2nd try if not the first. Their site says they support 56K connections, I can’t testify to this because 33.6 is my limit.
I don’t use the news groups so I can’t comment on that either.
Trouts, you sound computer literate, so let me bounce this one off ya: If at some point a banner was required by any free ISP, I would install the dial up connection on a proxy machine (which I already have, so no extra expense for me) and network to that from my PC. This effectively places the banner on the proxy, which I would never be looking at.
Do you think they could somehow get wise to this setup?
opus:
Can’t help. My take on proxy setup’s is that they are limiting so I did not use
them. At least that’s the way it used to be. They have gotten better but I have not
kept current. I use Linux for the ISP connection and IP Masquerading so my
intranet machines to the ISP all look like the Linux machine.
Most free ISP’s use their own IP protocol so your not a real node on the network
in the usual sense where you can setup your node without restriction. My guess
would be no with most free ISP’s. Freewwweb seems to be a bit different and it
may work with them. My attempt to connect above was a gross try but may work if
I fudge the connect parameters. The connection for you may be transparent. I don’t think they would bother to sniff for what you want to do as no matter what you do
on your end its still only 33k out on their end. If you try it please post what
happened or email me direct. Hummm, the way to tell would be to configure a new dialup and see if that works. Hopefully Freewwweb did not overlay existing dll’s so if you connect then you’d be a regular node.
Just setup a Dial-up and it worked so you probably don’t even have to do that. I just looked again for any system file changes and could not find that they have modified anything. It looks like their stuff kicks in at the browser level. It would be very easy for them to put in prohibitions so it looks like they are inviting you to use their system on the hope you’ll use their home page at some point to make a purchase. These guys have a better idea.
I’ve been on Netzero since October and haven’t had any real problems, like I/we did with AOL. I do get kicked off occaisionally, and it is usually at the time all the demon seed school children are surfing the web after school instead of cleaning their guns, but it is maybe every other week or so it happens. (Moreso in the winter.)
On AOL I was kicked off all the time and could never get online with them from 2p-11p. Damn kids. Funny how you don’t mind these problems when its FREE!
