NetZero limited to 40 hours

[deltaf508]

Has anyone heard that netzero is now limiting your online time to 40 hours...Anything more and they say they will charge $9.95 or something crazy like that.

my question is will they really enforce this, and how will they???

Any thoughts

[RayH]

They'll enforce it with a credit card! Or, just cut you off.

You can try FREELANE (http://www.freelane.com) . Last I checked, no time limit and they still work.

JUNO (http://www.Juno.com) and BLUELIGHT (http://www.Bluelight.com) ought to give you some free hours, also.

Of course, if you do hopping around I'd definitely recommend that you a neutral corner online e-mail box accessible from any ISP!

[Cygnus-X1]

You might want to hold of on JUNO though, take a look at this from

ZDNETnews

"Juno's money-making scheme has watchdogs all shook up"

"Juno Online Service's jump into the supercomputing business has alarmed consumer and privacy advocates, who fear the move could open subscribers' computers to vulnerabilities--including snooping by third parties such as the government" http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2681888,00.html

Very Disturbing..

[psyklone]

how will they enforce it? whether or not you realize it, not only do they know how long you spend online, they also know where you go while you're connected to them. that's part of why you have to fill out that little survey when you sign up with them. they compare your surfing habits with others in your demographic and that's what determines what kind of ads you get fed while you're connected to their service. the cracks i've done for their software have taken care of this 'little problem', but they have a new version out now .... of course i know how to get around the ads on this one too and will be documenting it soon for those that want to know but i don't plan on writing a program to automate the process this time. and just for the record ... this isn't bait for any 'banner advocates' to come and speak their minds. i've heard it, i know how it goes, blah, blah. just answering the question.

http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[Cygnus-X1]

The part that really gets me is how Juno's "program" will work in the background even if you are not online. That would be a weight on my precious resources. Imagine the novice computer user who already has a whole bunch of unnecessary programs running in the background as it is.
And what are they actually or could end up using it for???.....

[voogru]

I use BlueLight But its ver buggy... In a good way!!! Wen i go play Halflife the Banner Magicly Dissappears! and when i switch to full screen in ie the Banner also disappears. Heres the best part.. when i get a notcie of how many hours i have left right now it says like 4 hours left but i benn using that 4 hours since last month and im on for a lot longer than 4 hours a day!

get bluelight its BUGGY!!!! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif

note: Results may vary

-voogru

[mind245]

I imagine that Juno would only work when the computer has been idle for a given period of time (similar to a screen saver coming on). When you use your computer the program stops. For these kind of distributed applications your computer would only need to check in periodicly to work on tasks.

Imagine that your in a room full of people and you have to add up a thousand numbers. You could hand out groups of numbers to each person and ask them to bring back the total when they were done then hand them another set of numbers. Repeating this process and you could accomplish the task in no time.

I've heard of people trying to act as computational brokers of cpu cycles but unless it pays a quarter to half the cost of my hardware I'm not gonna do it.

[vfrxsw]

Freelane now has a 25 hour limit http://freelane.excite.com/faq.dcg
but adding that to the netzero limit helps


[This message has been edited by vfrxsw (edited 02-04-2001).]

[RayH]

AT&T World Net has a banner service for $4.95 w/ 150 hours monthly. Go over time, and you're in serious trouble!

You can play the shell game...keep signing up for "introductory" offers. The last I counted, you can probably get about eight months free!

[dosmastr]

ok you guys got me started on this one so look out, this is gonna be long i can tell right now.

Netzero charges 14.95 after the 40 hours.
juno only gives you a certain number of hours, but i suspect its lower then 10 because i used to live online with juno (as long as your modem was active they never disconnected you, sign onto napster, goto bed, wake up, your still online as long as your pc didn't goto sleep too) now they have some BS where they want to equilize the load on thier servers, so certain members who use the service "more then the average user" get booted, they implimented the restrictions 2 months ago atleast, i have yet to sign onto juno web without getting kicked right off with a message saying "prioitization of service BLAH...............Blah, you can't sign on until 4 AM tomorrow. one weekend i was a smart **** and tried at 3:50am, got the error then tried at 4:30am, still got kicked, even the next day at 2pm (2 days later) no juno web for you! the message mocked. so, now i'm on netzero.

Blue light, here's what you do, get a browser like opera, its suppost to be faster then IE and netscape anyway, uninstall IE and NS, and vowala, no ad banner since its based on IE/NS's browser tech.
however, as the person above stated, and could not state enough (and i can't say it enough either) THIS SERVICE IS BUGGY.
As for the ad boxes, is there anyway to make them only display ads that i actually might be interested in? (When i clicked history, i didn't mean i wanted to buy a "genuin Dead Sea Scroll" when i said music, i did NOT mean opera music)
if you know a bit about computers i have a suggestion for you, get a cable connection and use expertcity.com to offset the cost, you might even end up making money if you're as good as one of those "ultimate members"
but expertcity requires a perminent connection such as Cable, ISDN or xDSL (or any hard wire) so you're stuck there.
as for email, juno is pretty good, you can setup custom filters and in version 5 you can use nick names in your address book rather then key in the whole email.
(if i want to send something to myself i just tell my address book my email, with the nick name "me" then when i fwd something to myself (so it catches my eye later for those of you who are wondering) just type "me" in the address box)
don't do that^ in C++, they will nab you for nested comments.
anyway, juno's software doesn't require an inet connection (but you can use webmail also) so if you max out all your free hours you can still do email. and atleast on my twichy system, the software is pretty stable.

what is that thing with juno, like one of those SETI type deals?
is that included in the latest version 5? (they had 2-3 BETA's out, i have the latest one and am about to upgrade to the final release actually....maybe not now though)

anyone on that "freei.net" service?

all i can say < after all that above of course > is if you guys sue juno for privacy infingement or whatever call me in on that class action suit too hehe.

dosmastr
the verbose one

[RalphArch]

you could try Winfire - I have had their free internet access for about 6 months. Actually in their lowest tier program you are committing to spending $200 on a DSL modem once available. For that you get slow speed dsl (144k) and some advertising.

Since they said there was dsl available to me and its not they offer free dial up in the interim. Better than freei and some of the others - although freei went under anyway ( over to netzero with accounts)

[wyvrn]

I guess Netzero is no longer defenders of the free world? It is amazing how quickly this company went from free to being ruled by he almighty dollar.

Bah I pay for my ISP and get superior service. I am happy with it.