Internet Service Providers |
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The comments below are unedited opinions of the colleagues who submitted them. A date (month and year) indicates that the comments following that date are from the given month and year. The most recent comments appear at the bottom. *** CAUTION: ISP INFORMATION IS PARTICULARLY TIME-SENSITIVE ***
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10/98 Thank you all for your responses regarding Internet Service Providers. I finally chose to go with Mindspring.net. They had a really good basic service plan for 6.95 $/month that allows you to be on for 5 hours/month. It gives you a POP3 mail account, 5 MB space on their FTP/WWW server, access to usage statistics on your page. I don't usually do a lot of browsing so I'm only using the account for uploading and downloading email. If you sign up on the net (www.mindspring.net) they waive the $25 setup fee! If any of you do it, please mention me as a referral! They'll give me one free month's worth of access! My account on Mindspring is 'avijit@mindspring.com'.
| Avijit Hey Avijit! A friend of mine has a Media One cable modem and it's so fast that it's almost worth paying more just for the speed. When he gets a message like "downloading file, estimated time 45 minutes" it will take 2 minutes. I just looked into getting one in Arlington and here's how much it costs. Installation is $49. The card (if you buy it from them) is $49 for a pc and $99 for a laptop. Monthly service is $40 if you have standard $30/month cable tv service or $50 if you more basic cable service. Could you please post the responses? I'm still making a decision myself. Thanks. We have a cable modem now (which my game playing 15 year old son swears by but I think is excessive!), but before that, we went with Mindspring.com. It is great and has many options in terms of how much/how little access you want, with different pricing. We got the unlimited access package for $19.95. They have good speed and several local numbers for access, and since they are not one of the biggies, there usually isn't a problem with too many people on their servers. We also have cable television. The total is $50/month. I don't think it changes if you don't have cable TV. You have to prepay each month. The installation is $50 if you already have a card, $100 if not. The installation guy was GREAT. Very pleased with that. Depending on where you live, you might check out the various options. We went with Mediaone. My son absolutely adores it. A bonus is that he can watch cable tv on his pcyou don't need a cable box or converter. I have also heard good things about TIAC. AOL has been fine recently. They seem to have solved their overload/access problems. (I can't say I'm picky, though.) Do be sure that whoever you go with has a LOCAL access # (check against your telephone service zones). If you have one of the cheaper calling plans that can make a real difference. Avijit, if you go to www.thelist.com it will give all the ISP's available. Yeah, I used my brown account for about 2 years or so afterwards as well. Now i use 110.net, see its web page "www.110.net" for details. They charge only $8.50/month for unlimited access. Worth checking out. 10/98b I've been using a company called the CIA (Complete Internet Access) since last December and I have no complaints. It's only $9.95/month for unlimited access, 5mb for a web page, and email with POP3 service. I really haven't required their support staff since I signed up but I remember them as being pretty knowledgeable. If you're looking for cheap, reliable, simple internet access, I would definitely recommend them especially since you can save $144/yr over using AOL. Their web site is www.thecia.net and they are located over by MIT somewhere. Hi, Avijit I recently switched to Earthlink, via Working Assets. (Working Assets is a long distance phone company (in cooperation with Sprint) that donates to various social/environmental/etc. causes. The same donations hold true if you use their Internet service (in coop. with Earthlink). Their charge is the "standard" $19.95 for unlimited Internet (plus $25 setup), and includes 6MB of Web space (I know you're not interested in that; it was a plus for me). I've been able to send file attachments with no problem, which was one of my main criteria for an ISP. Juno, a free email service (shareware they get paid by advertisers), recently added Juno Web, currently $14.95/mo unlimited (introductory price), and around $10/mo for 7 hrs. I haven't tried them, but I've been happy with the plain Juno email. If you're interested in just the email, it's shareware, with free unlimited use. I have a friend who uses Sprynet and is very pleased with them. It costs $19.95 a month for unlimited use. Not sure how to locate them, but I'm sure it's easy. If you have no luck I'll see what I can do to help. we use GTE.NET and even without our family discount (my husband works for GTE) it's under $20/month. ISDN connection is available if you want it don't know how much the ISDN costs where you live. We use a 56K POTS modem and haven't looked into cable modem (my engineer husband says it's not sufficiently secure, being nothing but a big LAN, and I like to shop on the internet). I like this provider better than the big ones like AOL because we don't get any of the SPAM email no ads, no nothing just email! They have lots of local access lines and I've never had a problem getting onto the network. I use Software Tool and Die in Brookline (www.world.std.com, I think; or maybe just www.std.com). I'm a casual user also, and I like their $5/month flat fee plus $2/hour of usage. They are one of the oldest ISPs around and have excellent tech support (i.e., you call them up and an actual person answers the phone). We use tiac for home and have had good luck. My mom and aunt subscribe to Tiac and swear by it. I think the company is based in Massachusetts. My aunt pays around $12 a month I think.. I use At&T WorldNet, and I like it. I haven't really had any problems with this service. I think they also have different usage plans I've been a subscriber to a local Internet access provider, The World (world.std.com), for quite a few years, starting in the days before the World Wide Web when Internet access meant a Unix command line. Overall I've been quite satisfied; pricing has been competitive if not always rock bottom, and it's always been easy to reach their help line. I've had a CompuServe account for ten years as well, but I still prefer to get my Internet access through The World performance and customer service are both superior. Two caveats: They have had a few service disruptions recently due to hardware/software problems. These seem to have been corrected, and I don't have any reason to suspect that there's any deeper problem. So far as I know, they don't offer idiotproof software with a browser preconfigured with their operating parameters. This just means that you have to either download the relevant information from their Web site, or have them walk you through the setup over their help line. 10/98c In the past 6 months I've tried 3 different services and have been very happy with all three.....Erols was the first I tried and really liked the service (and price) except they didn't have a server that could transmit at a faster rate, so I switched to IBM. I also at the same time got an offer for 3 months free trial with Javanet. IBM and Javanet are basically the same, so I tossed a coin and stayed with Javanet. I don't know of anything that inexpensive but we've been moderately happy with GTE.NET. It's a little slow during the busiest times of the business day, and I seem to get knocked off the network in midsearch occasionally, again during the busiest times. But for after hours use from home I've been very pleased with this service. I think it's in the neighborhood of $20/month though. I've been with Erol's for about 2 years (started in Virginia) . They had a lot of problems at first because of rapid growth. I stuck with them and they have been working fine for some time. They are reasonably cheap but you have to pay for a year or more at a time to get the good rate; I would definitely recommend them. I have 28.8 access now and I always get the full 28.8 when I log in, some providers have noisy lines and you don't get the full band width. They also have recently added 56K access for the same rate. Actually, I do have a 33.6 modem and it does support this at full speed it depends primarily on your access phone lines and how noisy they are. This is something the provider has no control over. Erol's rates are about $15 a month or even lower, depending on how many years you want to sign up for. It is definitely less than $20 which is what many charge. It does support email as all of them do, but you can only have one person (i.e. my fiancee and I share the same email address at home). Some carriers will allow you to have more than one email account with different names on the same internet account. Erols doesn't support this, which may be a negative A word of warning: if you get a company that advertises a "local phone call" to log on, find out from NYNEX where the service is actually located (i.e. which town you're actually calling). A Cambridge based friend signed on with Concentric, based on their ad saying it was a Cambridge phone number. Guess what? They are really located in Waltham, so each time she used them she was really calling Waltham at 5 cents a minute. Since she was a very heavy user and sometimes left the computer on overnight, imagine her surprise when she got a $600 monthly phone bill from NYNEX! No negotiating: NYNEX demands the money. Concentric says she should have heeded the teeny tiny wording at the bottom of their ad: "check with your local phone company for exact local phone charges." I use Mindspring. It is great, and has a variety of plans ranging from $4/mo to $22/mo. They do have a local number(s). I'd go downstairs and connect to them on the internet downstairs and get them to send you a kit at home. Their info will also be on their web page so you can see if it suits you. What is really nice about them is they have high speed lines. 2/99 Yes, that's what I did. I know you can order it from them, but they charge $6 for shipping. I did it from home directly onto my computer, but imagine it will fit on a disk, or a zip disk. I believe the address is www.netzero.com. The only (absolute only) thing that annoys me about netzero is a small 'toolbar' that always appears on the screen when I'm online, but aside from that I love it. (The toolbar displays ads.) I've never had a problem dialing in or being disconnected. Download it and give it a try. I went directly from my college server to netzero, so I've never paid for internet service and don't think I ever will now. If Media One is in your area, I definitely recommend a cable modem. It doesn't tie up a phone line, you're always connected (no need to dial in), and it's incredibly fast. It's kind of expensive but well worth it, $4050 per month. I use Galaxy. The monthly charge is $9.95 for unlimited access, they have a good network of local dialup numbers, and the tech support is decent. Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of service. They are based in Newton. www.gis.net I use Earthlink, through Working Assets. I pay $19.95/mo for unlimited Web access, plus email including file transfers. I call into a local access number, so that's charged according to whatever plan I have with Bell Atlantic (in my case it's measured service). The browser that comes with it is Netscape. I chose this option because: (a) the file transfer is good (with respect to sending files to/from Abt and/or my freelance clients); (b) Working Assets contributes 1% of total payments to charitable causes; and (c) I get 6 MB of Web page space, which I use to advertise my business, among other things. For email only, I use Juno, which is free. (Juno also offers Web service for $14.95/mo.) (http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654JUNO [6545866]) I use 110.net, see www.110.net there are tons of local numbers, so no phone costs service costs 8.50 month only, unlimited, and provides great access at fast speeds. 11/9 ***We have RCN and are pretty happy with it. A couple of times, the connection has been down over the past 6 months for a few hours (incidentally, since we also have RCN telephone, it annoyed us because we had no email, internet, tv cable, or telephone all at once). But, we LOVE having such a fast internet connection and the service has been good. They also give you the first 3 months of cable modem free. You are required to sign up for regular TV cable (you can't just get internet cable modem). ***RCN has better customer service and better rates. ***I've got media one and it's great. they've been around longer than RCN and are very good ***We have Mediaone and I'm happy with it (and so is my gameplaying son). You might want to look at the number of clients for each service in Arlington the more there are in an area, the slower the service gets. Also, whether each service gives you more than one email address, free web site hosting, etc. The one negative thing about Mediaone is only one email address. ***RCN seems highly disorganized from my experience. Media One has provided basic cable to us without any hassles. ***We have had internet access through Media One for several months now. I love it! It is really fast really brings internet access to a whole new level. Also, it doesn't tie up the phone lines. I like the set monthly rate, too. Before we had a plan based on usage, and I often was frustrated by the slowness and any "wrong turns" I made. I have used MediaOne's technical assistance phone number a few times and people were very helpful. Good luck! 5/00 ***I believe there are several free ones. One I know of is netzero. Sorry, I don't know how secure they are, but I'm sure you could send them an email and they would give you their specs. ***Go to www.thelist.com ***We got tired of AOL cutting us off in the middle of a session, so over the weekend we got Juno. It's free if you take the advertising, $9.95 otherwise, and it seems fine so far. ***I use Software Tool and Die (in Brookline). They have a number of different plans (go to www.std.com) I think we pay $5 a month for up to 20 hours of connect time. ***If that is the only thing you like, you know that you can disconect those features? You can allow ONLY certain people to use the instant mesenging and you can have the buddy list feature not show up on your screen. ***Low cost? How about free? Try www.myfavoritei.net. You don't pay anything, you just have a 6"x1" banner for ads on your screen whenever you are logged on. I haven't had any security problems with it. No viruses or password stealers or anything. I have more danger of those occurences with AOL than any internet service. 1/01 ***I've had RoadRunner since July 2000 and would never go back to a regular modem. It is just fantastic. I never get kicked off. I have had only 1 problem in the 7 months I've had the service. We had a power outage and I had to reboot the RoadRunner system. It was 11:30 at night when I called them and they helped me fix the problem in less than 3 minutes! They were courteous and pleasant. It is a 24hr help line. It is well worth the $40 I spend each month for it. ***We've had roadrunner for over a year. No problems. Installation was free -- but I think this was a limited time offer. There have been no problems. We have both our laptop and desktop on it (networked using Windows 98). It's worth it to us -- we have only one phone line and use the internet a lot. There have been no "extra" charges and there are dialup numbers across the country when you travel. *** We have an AT&T Roadrunner cable modem at home. We've actually created a home network and have 5+ computers hooked up. Of course, now that 3 of 4 kids are in college it is hardly necessary, but. . . Internet speed is comparable to what we have here at Abt (we live in Cambridge--it might be faster in Lexington because it depends on how many people are on your bandwidth at any given time). The installation guy we had was great--he even left us with a roll of extra cable, and explained what needed to go where and why. Trouble-shooting has also been pretty decent, considering we have an "illegal" home network with our own firewall. Nowadays they have it set up so that you can start out with a network that is supported by them--I recommend this if you are going to be sharing computer time with teenage boys. If you have trouble, when you first call they will tell you where there are any problems or outages. If it happens to be in your area, your machine will reset itself as soon as the problem is corrected. Before they come out to give you the modem, they will tell you what you need in terms of computer speed, etc., and give you detailed instructions on how to prep the computer. We installed our own NIC cards, but they will do it for you as well (it just costs a lot more if they do it). Basically, we've had Roadrunner from the beginning of MediaOne cable modem (5+ years), and it has been pretty flawless in performance. No complaints here. One thing you may run into--if your machine is a Windows 98 and all the IRQs are full, you may have to get a USB port NIC card. I don't think the tech support people there know that that is the solution. So, if you have a windows 98 machine, you should ask them BEFORE they get there how to check the IRQs, and if you are full up, ask them to bring a USB NIC card as well as a regular NIC card to try out. We just went through that with Jim's niece, who has just gotten Roadrunner up in Lowell. *** Their installation fee is for a location at their convenience. In my case, the cable entered on one side of the house, but I wanted the computer on ther other side of the house. I had to run cable myself down to the basement, across the basement ceiling, and back up again on the other side of the house. While access is usually very good, your access can still be on the slow side during peak times. You are getting access to their ISP equipment, which can become overloaded. As they probably told you, you need a network card on your computer. You can instill one yourself, or they will rent you one (and install it) for a nominal fee (about $2/month). All in all, a good experience. *** I got one last May (Mediaone) and feel very good about it. They installed in a couple of day after you call. The installation lasted about 2-3 hours and you are ready to surf. My rate is 39.95 since I had cable service. If you don't have cable, the rate is 49.95. The service is pretty good too. And we have no problem using it. 11/01 FREE ISPs *** Juno is free but has restrictions on when you can use it. NetZero provides 10 free hours a month (with banner ads) and unlimited hours (w/o banner ads) for $9.95/mo. (a combination of Juno and NetZero was suggested) AT&T's regular dialup is $4.95/mo for $150 (w/ banner ads), $14.95/mo w/o ads PeoplePC is $9.95/mo or you can visit www.thelist.com for a list of ISPs and their prices. | |||||||||||||||