How about a Free Internet Service?

I was chatting with Walter Scott, one of my local friends and a Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter reader, at lunch last week. Walter has a new notebook computer and was trying to come up with a good solution for dialup access for two purposes.

First, when he travels, he wants to have a good dialup solution with local phone numbers in most of the country. Many hotels have wired or wireless Internet access, but not all of them — or they charge an outrageous price like $10/day for high-speed access.

Second, he wanted a backup connection via dialup for those times when he has cable Internet troubles (ever notice that your phone still works, even though your electric utility has lost power in your area of town?) — I sent my August 29th Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter via dialup on Hurricane Katrina Day -- no power, but my notebook had its battery and my telephone worked.

I mentioned to Walter that he could Get Free NetZero Internet Access for 10 hours per month.

Walter had this to say in his first report about NetZero's Free Internet Access:

Terry:

Went to your webpage and clicked on the free netzero ad. So far so good. The only problem is that currently they are giving me a free trial of Netzero platinum, which I get automatically with no choice, so I can't really tell what the difference is between the platinum and the free service until a week has passed. But:

1. the download is VERY small
2. you can pre-set up your account on their website when you d/l or you can set up the account when you install the software
3. looks like they want you to have an alternate email, and when you signup they take a lot of demographics. You can opt out of email ads, though. So far I've not had any ads pop-up, but I'm sure that is because of the free trial.
4. it installs w/ no problems, you enter your phone number and it finds local access numbers for you. You can create as many dialing locations as you want, you just need to know the phone number to enter so they can find the numbers local to that area. This is done before you log in, very similar to AOL
5. operation is just fine (so far!) it brings up IE and directs it to your "personal" Netzero page. I exit IE and fire up Opera and off I go.
6. I did successfully access my powweb email via Netzero and Outlook Express, again I'm not sure if that is because of the free trial or if the free version supports pop3. But webmail works fine!

I'm going to wait until 1/19 or so (free trial will expire) to try this all again. So far I cant find anyway to track your on line hours. Other than that it all looks good!

Both Walter and I are sure that NetZero has some way to monitor the hours spent in the free, 10-hour per month program. Of course, since hours-tracking during the free trial of NetZero Premium is meaningless, he's not likely to find any report of hours spent until he actually has a limit.

Look for more reports from Walter as he shifts from the initial week-long trial of the NetZero Premium service and reverts to their free service. Of course, if he was going to stay with dialup, he could always buy the Platinum Service. Get NetZero Platinum today! Platinum gives you fast reliable internet access for as low as $6.95/month!

Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!

<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/free-internet-service.php">How about a Free Internet Service?</a>

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.