In which Juno Free Internet makes Mommy's shit list...

The BBQ Pit
1

I am SO not in love with Juno Internet. If I suddenly disappear, y’all, it’s because I imploded with rage and fell into another dimension, where I’m sure they have trans-dimensional Internet with no ad banner.

Chug chug chug, the ISP that couldn’t. All week it’s been unusually slow, the Better Half can’t look at his PDA Geek Newsletter on his lunch break, 'cause it takes 20 minutes just to get the main page loaded up.

And constant disconnects, every 10 minutes it kicks you out, with just “you have been disconnected, if the problem continues, try re-installing Juno.”

So yesterday and today it’s been horrible, and a new weird thing is happening–every 15 minutes, the hard drive whirs, obviously it’s loading something, and then the whole thing slows down to a glacial speed, I’m not kidding, the hourglass is just barely cranking around.

So today I try to do what they keep telling me to do: reinstall Juno. Well, first of all, it won’t let me uninstall it, on Settings/Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs. Something about a DLL, I dunno. Tells me I’ll have to install Juno in a different directory (as it turns out, this is a blessing in disguise, but I’m getting ahead of myself). So I install it under Program Files/Juno2 (I’m so clever), and then when you get to the part where you have to pick an access number, I discover–there’s no more local access number.

The whole point of us getting the long-awaited Juno Free Internet last January was that they were finally offering a local access number. What’s the point of having free Internet if you’re going to have to pay long-distance charges?

But there’s the list, just the same old four long-distance numbers, no local number. Geez geez geez. I go upstairs, slam things around a while, finally remember that I didn’t install it OVER the old Juno, go back downstairs, delete Program Files/Juno2, have to fiddle around with the desktop shortcuts, explaining things to Win95, “no not THAT one, THIS one over here,” and here I am, back online. Apparently none the worse for wear (except for a few gray hairs).

So I dunno whether it’s cause or effect–they dropped the local number because things are slow, or things are slow because everybody’s going through the one number.

One thing’s for sure, it hasn’t improved since they assimilated FreeWeb and whoever the other one was.

How much longer, O Lord, must we wait till the Internet truly has the same status as television, easily accessible to all, albeit with ads? I don’t mind the ads, Lord, honestly, if only things would speed up. I mean, I don’t have to sit there in front of the TV reading a magazine while Good Morning America loads.

2

Juno is always my favorite to play with. List yourself has having no hobbies, delete all the ad folders, give yourself fake names…

The free email is… Okay. Good in a pinch. The web servce is actually better than bluelight.com. Except for that fracking AD bar which sits everywhere but someplace out of the way.

My favorite was getting 4 different rates for the Paid web access. ranging from expensive to cheap. In the same day, good at the same time. Doesn’t anyone think up there?

3

Juno suck the big donkey DDG, I hear you. You are truly a more patient person than I am it seems, because I have already tossed that piece of crap off my hard drive. I even tried their pay service for a bit, and canceled that after about 2 weeks because it sucked just as bad.

Ah well, back to pay ISP.

4

Many thanks for the timely donkey dick warning, Aenea. It’s getting bad enough that the Better Half is considering actually paying for Juno, especially since they’re running their $8.33 a month ad again. I’ve been sitting here wondering whether it’s worth the upgrade. I’ll pass along your warning, intact. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.

Oooh, “it’s better than bluelight.com”. Big whoop.

I don’t get the different rate thing, either. The BH swears he saw one go past that said something like, “Sign up for 36 months for only $36” or something like that, at the same time as they were running the $10.95 ad, the $9.95 ad, and the $8.95 ad.

5

Duck

I feel your pain. I live in a rural area where the only option is Aol. None of the “free” sites have a local number yet and sometimes I just feel like sticking my head out the window and screaming “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore.”

What really pisses me off is the fact that I can’t even complain about it. The one time I bitched in the pit, everybody told me about all the really great free ISPs out there and what a jerk I was for using Aol.

Get a grip, folks. If and when any free service gives me a phone number, I’m on it like stink on shit, but I just can’t afford 150+ hrs of long-distance each month.

Ok, end of hijack and personal rage. I hope Juno straightens out for you. Thanks for giving me a thread to vent in. Peace.

6

But why not post it again? Try http://www.worldshare.com
Donate as little as $10 a year to a charity, and you get free internet access with NO BANNERS for the full year. I forked over $10 to Toys for Tots and I couldn’t be happier. No evil corporations are making money off me, and some kid, somewhere has a really cheap toy that he didn’t have before. :slight_smile:

I have cable at home, but use Worldshare on my laptop at work. I usually connect at 45,000 bps and rarely get disconnected. Only one caveat : no alt.binaries groups. Unless you’re a big time porn fiend, that shouldn’t be a problem, though.

7

bluelight.com is one I used for 3 weeks. It takes exactly 30 seconds to log on, long enough for the opening commercial to play while dialing up and logging in. Then the massive ad bar sits on the bottom of the screen and did zippo while I was there. It’s slow, and mucks up your entire setup by insisting you install every Yahoo plugin ever built. You end up with about 3 inches of screen to see your web page. Sucked.

8

Okay, I went and looked at the Worldshare website, and yes, they do have a local access number.

But.

Generally speaking, whenever something seems to good to be true–it is. What’s the catch?

For one thing, my brother-in-law has not only Juno, but also NetZero and several other free ISPs installed on his computer, and he discovered that the Juno software evidently won’t allow him to use the other ISPs. And as I discovered yesterday, Juno won’t allow you to uninstall it. So why should I bother to spend days screwing around with my computer, trying to install another ISP, with the end result probably being that I’ll have to reformat the hard drive just to get rid of the junk, in the process losing the local Juno access number, because I’ll have to start over with Juno, and the downloaded list no longer includes it.

9

DDG, head over to your start menu, choose settings.
Go to add/remove programs, and find in that list “Juno”.
Hit the add/remove button.
Toss that piece of crap! :smiley:

10

Do remember to download your new software first though, so you can get back up on the net.

11

Got me. I’ve been using it for a month now with great results, though, and haven’t had anything spring up on me. They took the $10 off my card and that was that. No other charges. You’re right though - it does sound too good to be true. Perhaps this company will fall flat on its face, but until then, I’m going to be enjoying my free access.

12

Aenea, yeah, that’s what I did, and it gave me some kind of “I’m sorry but I really can’t uninstall this program” error message. I’m not anxious to tempt Fate by going back and trying it again–this time it would probably delete and then I would be history, SDMB-wise.

I’m guessing it has something to do with IE5, which came with it, installed itself with it, and won’t allow you to uninstall IT, either.

But thanx for the input. :slight_smile:

13

DDG, too bad you don’t have my problem. My problem is thus: Juno always crashes as soon as I am connected. The ad bar crashes, the mail program crashes, everything dies. Except the connection. I can’t do email (through them) and I can’t do newsgroups (unless I use… ugh… deja) but dammit, no ads, no nothing.

–Tim

14

Homer, mine did that for about a week.It was great! I have DSL at home and use Juno at work. I just figured out something today. It is programmed to crash. I swear, it must be. When I try to log on by closing the ads, sometimes it crashes. When I log on by clicking one of the ads, it has never crashed. There is also a smaller bar that comes up with the ad bar when you connect by clicking on the ads. Sometimes there are no ads. Juno bites. I want my freewwweb back. :frowning:

15

In response to the extreme trauma that you have all been subjected to, I propose that Juno cut all of your monthly fees in half.

Come on, kids.

If someone you never met gave you a free car, and you found out it didn’t work all that well, would you be surprised and outraged?

If someone you never met gave you a free watch, and you found out it didn’t work all that well, would you be surprised and outraged?

If someone you never met gave you a free cable television de-scrambler, and you found out it didn’t work all that well, would you be surprised and outraged?

If the answer to any of those questions is “yes” for you, then you may just have some problems outside the scope of this here thread. For the rest of you, I have to ask why Juno’s free web service is any different.

16

If you can’t uninstall it, you can still delete it. Just delete it’s folder, delete any shortcuts, and pull it out of the registry if you’re feeling brave.

17

While I appreciate the sentiment you are expressing, I feel I must point out that Juno PAY service is just as awfull (as was mentioned earlier in the thread had you been paying attention).

Pay or free, Juno sucks. I believe that is the general point of the thread. I want my freeweb back too. :frowning: