If Netzero was a person, I would beat them to death with a lamp.

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t normally make rants about bad products, but… how netzero managed to take something so simple and so thoroughly fuck it up is just amazing.

Providing dial up internet service: Get a phone line, get a rack of modems, hook it up to a PPP server. There. You’re done. You’re an ISP. Whee. Simple. We’ve been doing this for a long time. The technique is well understood.
I moved, and I need a dial up ISP for a few weeks before I get cable. I couldn’t think of one offhand except netzero, and I figured since all dial up ISP service should basically be identical, I called them and ordered service.

I wanted a name/password and a number. No, I have to download their stupid software. Okay, fine, whatever.

So I’m surfing, and it’s slow as hell. Way worse than my previous dial up. Oh - that software that I JUST INSTALLED needs to download several updates to itself over my already slow ass dial up connection. Fine, whatever.

Updates are done downloading, still painfully slow. Next time I connect, I find out why: They were taking their slow, shitty dial up connection, and FILLING IT UP BY DOWNLOADING FUCKING ADS IN THE BACKGROUND. I’m paying them for this bullshit and they’re using the bulk of my bandwidth to download fucking video ads.

Fine. Whatever. Shitty, but I’ll deal with it.

Now… after 5 minutes of painfully slow internet service, the connection just goes dead. The phone is still connected, just no data is being returned. Can’t even resolve names or ping anything. Okay… so you just reconnect, right? No, of course not, because their STUPID FUCKING SOFTWARE CAN’T HANDLE DISCONNECTING WITHOUT CRASHING.

And when it crashes, any time you rerun the program, it can’t communicate with the modem. And is this fixed by a reboot? No, of course not. Their crashing software actually BREAKS WINDOWS and windows will refuse to recognize your modem no matter how many times you scan for it, or reboot.

It took me several hours, and about 20 reboots, to figure out that… if I disconnect the modem, disable the serial port in the bios, reboot, let windows start, then reboot again, enable the serial port, plug in the modem… and then windows will probably detect your modem.

Sometimes you need to reinstall the netzero software… which wouldn’t be so bad, except that now you have to go through the whole process of downloading updates and ads again on the shitty, shitty dial up service.

Now their stupid program locks up for no reason. I’ve come to expect about 5 minutes of service before I have to reboot, and sometimes reboot and go through that whole process listed above.

In fact, I think this connection is dead right now. In order to post this, I’m probably going to have to save it, and reboot…
Fucking fuck netzero. Dial up internet service is so easy, yet… you fucked it up so badly.

PS. I actually wrote this like 4 days ago. Indeed, my connection died while I was on the board, about to post. Only a reboot didn’t fix it. It killed my modem entirely. After a few hours, and maybe 15 reboots, trying everything I could think of, including things that had worked before, I just gave up.

Today I remembered I had a winmodem. Turns out it doesn’t work. But after fooling with the winmodem, I plugged the regular external modem back in, and, of course, now it suddenly wants to work. It’ll probably kill my modem for another week, but hopefully I’ll have cable by then.

2

Winmodem?! hhcccckhk ptoo!

3

On a possibly ironic note, back in the days of pre-DSL yore, when I made my first tentative steps onto the wilds of thar Internet, and Netzero was a free ISP (lordy, what, 5-6 years ago?), I never had a single problem with connection. Speed-wise…hell, I dunno, I didn’t know crap about the 'net or computers even, back then.

I realize this isn’t the most supportive or feel-good post I could make, but it’s all I got, as regards Netzero.

4

What about your local phone company? Their service is almost always better than Netzero.

5

Netzero does indeed suck donkey balls.

I built my dear, attempting-to-learn-newfangled-computer-stuff mom a PC last spring out of some parts I bartered. (At the time it was a better system than mine though!) Self, says I, I’m going to get them an ISP so mom can email me and I can send her pictures. I did some research online, and the local dial-up ISP which I had used a couple of years ago charged a setup fee; they didn’t used to. So I did a bit more reading and went with NetZero. Big mistake.

Not only is their software horribly b0rked and you have to use it, but I have administrative access allowed only on my account on the PC so they don’t accidentally break anything (more worried about younger bro than my mom)… anyway the stupid software wouldn’t save the username and password in any user account but my own. So they basically had to go through the setup process every time they wanted to log on. I tried temporarily enabling admin access and setting it up, but no dice. Plus it had this little crap thing that sits on your desktop and flashes ads at you while you’re surfing. Screw that.

I learned my lesson and went with the local ISP. Got a username and password, set it up as a network connection, made a shortcut on the Desktop for it, for my parents. I should really have known better to begin with.

6

Netzero was apparently better before they merged with Juno a few years back, now they share Juno’s crappy service.

7

Any dial-up - hell, any internet service provider that makes you use proprietary software to get online is instantly suspect. If I can’t use Windows’ built-in programs to connect, I’m not using the service.

8

I used Netzero several years ago and I hate it to this day. First, they offered unlimited use in return for a floating ad window that you couldn’t close. Fine. No problem there. Then they made the window bigger, so big it used up about a quarter of usable space and you could no longer move it around. Then they cut usage time down to forty hours a month (so as to continue to “keep the Internet free for everyone”), and accompanying each new transgression were blurbs advertising that you could do away with these annoyances by becoming a paid subscriber. Their business philosophy was to offer free ad-supported service under the guise of keeping the Internet “free for everyone” and then annoy and pester you into becoming a paid subscriber.

9

Tee hee.

I abandoned Netzero many, many moons ago, and for much the same reason. After wandering forlorn in the wilderness, I stumbled across a bare-bones ISP at a rock bottom price–$3.95 a month for 150 hours, no e-mail address, no web space, no home page, no nothin’ but a dial-up connection. It’s not for the faint of heart, as they provide technical support for only for Windows '98 or later, and only by e-mail. But there are NO ADS, the connection is rock solid, and it’s dirt cheap. I’ve been very happy with them.

Just thought I’d rub it in. I love schadenfreude …

10

If all dial-up ISP’s are identical, why’d you stay with Netzero for so long? After three headaches, I would’ve been ordering another service.

Adam

11

I use netzero when I’m at home, and I’ve never had any problems. No ads, no updates, reasonable connection (for dialup, anyway).

Weird.

12

It’s only been a week, and I was expecting to be moved into the new place by now, where I’d be getting cable. There’s a delay on that, but hopefully that’ll still work out by the end of the week.

I didn’t want to go through the hassle of signing up with a new service just for a few days… I figured I could do without the internet for a while.