Free internet, is it here to stay?
Ok, free internet access has really nothing to do with investing, but I decided to write about it anyways. If you are like most, you have probably seen the TV commercial with the talking baby. The commercial is for a company called FreeInternet. It is a company like many others that offer free internet access in exchange for seeing a banner ad. Only one company, Freewwweb, gives you free internet access without having to display any ads. Instead, you are supposed to set your homepage to their homepage. However, it still works even if you don't do this. The reliabilty of the services is probably a little less than most pay-per month services, such as AOL or other ISP's, especially around internet rush hour (about 4:30-6:00p.m.). The services that I have tried are Altavista, Freewwweb, FreeI Networks, Freeworld by Excite, Ifreedom, and Bluelight or Spinway by Kmart. Freewweb is usually the fastest. The connection speeds show the same as others, but Freewwweb doesn't show ads and is noticibly faster than others. Freewwweb has been very reliable up until the past month or so when it started to become real popular. Now, it usually takes multiple times to get connected and sometimes it shows that you are connected, but nothing works and you have to reconnect. Freewweb is weak in this area. Many other services such as Excite will cut you off but will display a message that your connection has been dropped. Freewwweb usually shows that you are connected, but it sometimes doesn't work after a period of inactivity. Bluelight by Kmart offers some innovative features such as displaying video ads while getting connected. They have about six different video ads that display initially while you are connecting and disapear after you are connected. Ifreedom is probably the slowest and most annoying free ISP I have used. After about ten minutes of inactivity, it pops up something asking you to click on something or you will be disconnected. The most reliable has been FreeI. FreeI is the easiest to connect to and the connection stays alive for the longest period of time compared to other services. All of the services are all fairly easy to get setup. Simply sign up and download the software and it does most of the work for you. You may need to check first to see if the company offers a local number to dial in your area so that you won't be stuck with long distance charges. The setup for most of the programs is as simple as AOL. Freewwweb is a little more difficult to setup than most if you decide not to download Netscape to use with it. Freewwweb also does some strange things compared to the others. I have tried to log into my Datek online brokerage account using freewwweb without much success. The connection is usually dies after trying. Other times, it will stop working in Microsoft Internet Explorer, yet if you open up Netscape Navigator, it will work. In conclusion, if you are looking to save money, and can take the annoyances of ad banners, try them out. If you have a large monitor, you can move the ad to a corner of the screen without much of a disturbance. So, what have you got to loose?
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