AOL v ISP

Well I have run out of freebies & I guess I have to grow up & get my own ISP. Since there seem to be so many Internet experts subsribing to this ng I wonder if I could get some advice as to what to look for in an ISP. Cost is a factor. I don't do anything too sophisticated; lurk & post to a few ng's, chat, trade audio tapes of favorite groups, Rusted Root, Grateful Dead, etc, have a few favorite web sites, surf for freeware, maybe once in awhile do some research for school. So far MSN, ATT & AOL have been OK for me. So what am I missing? I will sign off now & put on my flack jacket. TIA to those strangers who will be kind.

.................................... I use AT&T Worldnet and am happy with it. You want an unlimited use account and pay no more than $20 per month. A 5 hour per month account isn't much good unless you only want it for e-mail. Just make sure the ISP you choose has a local access number.

And use (and support) the NETSCAPE browser. It's much better than MSIE.

Also, from any ISP, you can now use AOL's 'instant message' program (free) once you download the "plug-in". With it you can IM anyone on AOL and anyone else on the net as long as they also have the program. Netscape plans to incorporate this into their next version in 1998.

	Gary M.   :^)

Let's not start that. All indy ISP's has support for all browsers. Netscape, MSIE, Mosaic, even. And who wants to talk to an AOLer?

AOL will soon incorperate Netscape, not MSIE into it's newest versions, I guess their deal with microsoft ran out.

I had AT&T with an IE browser and it always messed up. The IE would cause a problem in the program. So listen to Gary.

By the way, what is wrong with AOLers besides they keep posting binaries. Yes it pisses me off too when I start downloading a huge file.

Gary M. wrote:

I agree with gary, at&t is good isp, i also liked earthlink too (just got kicked off for not paying on time , several times...ooops) erika/burgandy

Look for a small local provider. They ususally give better deals than the big guys, and a lot of the time, you can get shell access too. Just be careful, and stay away from anything that charges a setup fee or charges for a full year in advance, cuz they make it very difficult to change your mind. For Instance, I use Prodigy, which pisses me off regularly with its proprietary software which crashes and corrupts hard drive filing system. Recently, I signed up with a local provider that charges $10 a month for unlimited access. Unfortunately, I was never able to connect, the computer tells me it can't negotiate a compatible set of network protocols or some shit like that. I called tech support, and let me tell you, they were more friendly and willing to help than anyone at Prodigy ever was, but they were stumped. They walked me through the setup procedure, and it turned out I had set everything up perfectly, yet it still wouldn't work. They didn't know what to say. Prodigy tech support is notorious for doing either: !. Blame your equipment and any other software, or 2. Tell you to delete all prodigy files, run scandisk, (which almost always discovers file system errors) and reinstall the software. Needless to say, this is a pain in the ass, and they should just write patches to the software, it would probably save them time=money in the long run.

I don't remember this happening to me. Is this a recent thing (then again, all I ever did was newsgroup's and message board's).

I'm asking since I'm considering going back to Prodigy, or at least to an ISP (bad luck with them though. It took a long time for Internet America to work, and I could never get Powernet to access newsgroups).

CDM