That’s right, I am with AOL. I apologize beforehand for the blatant stupidity of it all, but on with life.
We are switching to DSL, but in order to balance out the monthly expense of the high-speed internet, we are ditching AOL. So I am in need of a new ISP, but not just any ISP, it has to have certain characteristics before we can switch over.
[li]It has to allow email file transfers of at least 3MB[/li][li]It has to be remotely accessible (i.e. AOL can be installed on a laptop and then connected to anywhere in the country via a toll free number)[/li][li]It has to be cheap[/li]Any personal experiences would be increasingly helpful in our quest for cheap service (sounds dirty huh). Thanks all!
Sorry about the coding. That was supposed to work, but I think I forgot a part.
Okay, so you’re looking to get DSL? Well, sad to say, you may not have much choice. Then again, you might. It all depends on where you live. Generally bigger cities have more choices. If you live out in the country somewhere, you may not be able to get it at all.
In my city, we had two providers, but one went out of business. Now it’s BellSouth or nothing. My BellSouth account gives me 20 hours per month of dialup access so I can log on from anywhere. My previous DSL ISP (the one that went out of business, DirecTV DSL) didn’t do this. I’m not sure if all the baby Bells have plans similar to this or not.
As far as price goes, you won’t find as much variation among prices as you do with dialup. Expect to pay $50 a month. My cable company had a deal going in which you could get a heavily capped (about 12 KB/s max, IIRC) cable internet connection for $25 a month. It sounds horribly slow (to me :)), but when you think about it, it’s double the speed of AOL for about the same price. You may want to see if your cable company offers a similar plan.
I have EarthLink DSL and it’s as smooooooove as butter, baby. Bout $50 a month here, though I got free setup and free equipment (make sure you pay attention to those setup and equipment fees, they’ll get ya). Also, see if you get professional installation or get DIY installation. I put mine in myself. It was basically running wires back and forth, but I sort-of knew what I was doing.
I also heard all kinds of DSL horror stories, but none of em have come true (yet) for me.
I’ll clarify a bit. We already have a DSL provider, so it’s not a matter of finding somebody who will give us DSL. We are just unsure as to whether or not the provider (DAEO net) will give us the requirements that we are looking for, thus the possible need for another ISP.
We had a free trial period of 30 days of the DSL, and kept AOL at the same time which worked great, but if we’re going to be paying for it then both at the same time is going to be a bit much to shoulder.
-foxy
What are your requirements?
Check my OP.
It has to allow email file transfers of at least 3MB
It has to be remotely accessible (i.e. AOL can be installed on a laptop and then connected to anywhere in the country via a toll free number)
It has to be cheap.
How about 1sthostweb.com? $50 the first year, $35 a year after that. I have two websites with them. Dunno if they’d work for you, but I’m really happy with them.
They’re not my ISP - I use DSL, but I’ll be switching my email accounts to the website and dropping AOL in the next few weeks myself. They allow 1G of transfer a month - but I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by email transfer or not…