I use a cable modem and I was also interested in finding a free service to
use as a backup and for remote access to email.
I have tried a lot of them and the two best one's were Freewwweb and
Worldspy. Freewwweb was the best by far ...no advertisements, no data
collection and set up in DUN just like any other ISP. Worlldspy  had it's
own dial up software that started you off at it's  home page but once you
left the home page you could be on any ISP...no adds, data collection or
anything else.  Connection speeds for both were the same I get from paid
accounts.

Unfortunately these companies only lasted a few years. They both went under
in the past three months referring all their customers to Juno. They found
out that you can only sell dollar bills for fifty cents for so long.

I tried Juno but found both it's free and discounted premium service (10
dollars a month unlimited) too intrusive and I don't like having to use
their software to log on. However Juno is succeeding in the market place
and I think you can count on it to be around for awhile. When my customers
ask me if I know of a free service that they can use for email and simple
browsing I set them up with Juno.

I think in the near future you will see dial up accounts bundled with cable
and DSL accounts as incentives to sign up. You will probably also see
telephone and long distance companies bundling ISP services with their
phone services

If you are willing to pay for an account and you look around you will be
surprised at the kind of deals you can find. Here in California the Auto
Club now offers a discount for Mindspring accounts...around 16 dollars for
the normal unlimited 20 dollar a month account. I finally ended up with
a  Earthlink account through my insurance provider USAA which offers it's
members Earthlink's  19.95 unlimited account for 13 dollars per month.

Mark Rode
The NoSpin Group


>If you want free access to the 'net, then you have to put up with
>the ad banners.
>
>Of course the banners are in the way!  If they didn't deliberately
>place them in strategic locations, you would just ignore them.
>By putting the banner over top of buttons and/or menu items,
>you are forced to look at the ad.
>
>In my experience, NetZero has the smallest banners of the services
>I have experimented with, but I haven't tried ALL the free services,
>so that statement is nothing more than my opinion.
>
>Jim Meagher
>
> > > > A friend is using Juno, and hates all of the ads that take up
> > > so much real
> > > > estate.  I believe I read that there is a free email/web program that
> > > > doesn't have banner ads.

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