Free internet? hmmmmm(pondering)

[Zotzmein]

People are skeptical about anything advertised for FREE. Example - You.

How long will companies like Amazon.com continue to do business without every showing a profit? Simple, as long as people believe that they are buying into the future and that the net will continue to produce billionaires (albeit mostly on paper) there will be venture capitalist aplenty willing to back such ventures.

Decent (in an analog world), minimum 28.8 - 33.3 some feature 56k connections.

You get to fill out a wonderfully comprehensive form, which offers you the opportunity to liberate yourself from the burden of your financial and personally history. Free e-mail so you can receive a plethora of target specific advertisements. And a golden chance to providing a sample of your blood for inclusion in the New World Order DNA profiling database*.

See paragraph above.

Hmmm, what’s that black helicopter circling overhead?

Regard to All,

Zotz Mein


* This is strictly a service of convenience; it will make integration into the dominate order of the new millennia easier on all those who willingly participate.


[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 11-10-1999).]

[jman01pa]

I posted the free internet www.freeweb.com (http://www.freeweb.com) and have been using it solid for a week. I am sure they have cookie'd me to death but my connection is great and there are no banner ads to deal with. The only email I have recieved from them is giving me my setup info. Its a standard dial up and I use IE 5.0 and outlook express on a hotmail account. My local ISP's cant do better even with a $20.00 a month fee. I have not figured out there gimick yet. There only requirement is to use there home page which is snap.com with there header.
http://freewwweb.snap.com/

See for yourself. Another frree site is WWW.netzero.com (http://WWW.netzero.com)

I used them in another city but they have a terrible banner ad but for free who cares.

[jman01pa]

I am not sure why more people dont use there services. Maybe there is a gimick i am not seeing or maybe they just dont advertise enough. Or are people afraid of what is free?

[socalgal]

Zotzmein, your post gave me a chuckle (albeit a sad one because it's too true..)

[kareem]

I dont know....free internet sure sounds good.

But why aren't more people using the service?
How long will it be free?
How is your connect speed?
What special features come with this "free" service?
How does this free ISP get its revenue?

Interesting?

P

[Thomcat]

I would assume that their servers monitor where and when you are surfing and are continuously building a profile on you. From there they can sell your profile as part of a qualified list for a considerable amount of money.

Thomas

[mp19934]

Freewwweb comnnects at least as fast as my ISP (paid 'til February) and I anticipate NOT renewing my account. I do NOT have to use their home page, I go directly to whereever i want. I wash cookies every startup and have no idea how they make money, they used to charge $100 to sign up from what I understand. I know there is no free lunch, but this sure tastes like it. They want a c/c number, but have not put any thing on it (yet).

[merlin]

in the UK we have had " free internet access " for a while , you only pay for the phone call and the internet supplier gets his money by offering advertisers a way to target users . I got lucky as AOL are trying a pilot scheme here , you pay £14.99 per month and you get a 0800 freephone number.
So you can surf 24 hours a day and no phone charges. I just hope AOL will make it available for all

[Zotzmein]

Good point my friend from across the big pond.

I don’t think most Americans realize that our British and Europeans associates are assessed a minute-to-minute fee when using the telephone, including local calls.

Here I pay one flat rate for local calls, which due to the limited amount of population give me a radius of at least eighty kilometers*, more than enough to reach my local access point.

In larger cities like New York or Chicago where “area codes” a more prolific, the phone companies tend to offer packets of weekly time to accommodate customers, who in some instances are making a toll call to ring their neighbor across the street.

I’ve done some limited travel outside of the United States, I don’t think Americans realize how lucky we are to have affordable telephone service.

Regards to All,

Zotz Mein

*Given this was a post in response to a metric user; I opted to utilize a standard of measurement he/she would easily recognize. Eighty kilometers works out to be around fifty miles.


[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 11-15-1999).]

[asad]

I have been useing free internet for a while and haven't paid a cent. I live in Canada, so if you would like to get it go to : www.3web.com (http://www.3web.com)
downloads the software and connect. Only problem a banne on top. not to big thought.

[ck42866]

theres a banner on top of this page too. maybe I should check out some free services as well.

[Eli]

Or you could just use something like Alladvantage to pay for any ISP you like. Works for me...

[daveleau]

worldspy- that's a new one.
I wonder if these companies are going to go teh way of the free pc and be bought up by different corporations. E-Machine bought FreePC.
Dave

[theCorvetteDoctor]

I live where 28.8 is tops in dial-up. I use Alta Vista first cuz it pops up quick and closes fast. World Spy has no ad banner, Freei.net is cool too but takes a couple of minutes to start and stop. DotNow has never worked on my machine, yet. NetZero and Tritium are good ones for areas that can get them. FreeWeb is a 22mb download, so I won't be using them. so it goes like this, AltaVista[/URL] www.@microav.com (http://www.@microav.com) www.Worldspy.net (http://www.Worldspy.net) <A HREF="http://www.freei.net" TARGET=_blank> www.freei.net (http://www.freei.net) </A>www.netzero.com www.tritium.net (http://www.tritium.net) mucho luck, DrVette

[This message has been edited by theCorvetteDoctor (edited 01-02-2000).]

[This message has been edited by theCorvetteDoctor (edited 01-02-2000).]

[neo_otyugh]

i have been making use of netzero for quite a while now, and am mostly pleased.
however, i find that there is a lot more network traffic when using it. downloads are no better the 4-5k most of the time, peaking at 7.2k. i have a 56k modem...but when i was using MSN...i hit a peak of 11k/sec on downloads.
right now i am saving for ADSL and hoping to say goodbye to analog connections.

[BillyB]

I have been using netzero for about 1 month and have hit, on several occasions, 8.4Kb/sec. That banner is REALLY annoying though and it seems to hang up the system occasionally while it is downloading a new advertisement. Also, initial connection "start-up" is VERY slow. I haven't been able to get DUN configured to operate correctly with netzero. It seems you MUST connect with the server using the provided icon, then everything operates correctly. That is to say, if you try to access the internet through an application eg. some help link or something, the "auto-connect" through DUN will not work...at least not for me.
All-in-all, though, it is free and I have no problem getting a 50666K connection established.