I first used NetZero when it first came onto the scene...a free national ISP that would run on advertisement revenue and give subscribers free access to the internet as long as they could put up with an ad banner that would be displayed on their system while they were online. Cool. I was willing to try it out. Free internet access, free e-mail, life is good right?

Well I stopped using NetZero shortly thereafter when I switched to another ISP (For which I pay $100 a year). Today, I guess NetZero is becoming a more massive force. The local movie theater gives out free NetZero CDs. NBA on NBC's Halftime Show is sponsored by NetZero. They have pretty funny commercials on TV (Well that's debatable). Wow right?

So I decided to give Netzero another spin to see how they progressed these past few years. I have to say I was disappointed nonetheleast.

The first flaw of NetZero is the considerable size of the download, which is almost 5 Megabytes (Software Version 3). The account sign up and marketing profile that NetZero subjects you to is definitely a downside too because that takes at least 15 minutes to fill out completely before you can go online. Arrgh.

Once you get through that, you can finally get down to using NetZero. I'm pleased to report that NetZero is compatible with Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0, which are the platforms I have tested NetZero on.

Choosing your access number will provide minimum hassle as NetZero has the largest selection of dial-up phone numbers of any Free ISP. My 562 (Southern California) area code had at least 10 numbers that were local to my home. Unfortunately, that's where the fun stops. Getting connected is another story.

I was disappointed with the number of connections that failed during dial-up. I think I was looking at about a 40%-50% failure rate in trying to get connected with NetZero during peak usage hours. At this point, NetZero's performance hit on the system is very noticeable because NetZero 's Version 3 of their ZCast dial-up program takes up a massive 22+ Megabytes of system memory. I feel this is very unacceptable level of memory consumption for today's systems and I feel you will agree with me. With the ZCast program taking up a large space of memory, many computers will find their system's performance degrade as the computer will turn to the hard drive for extra memory. (Note: The hard drive is hundreds times slower than RAM memory).

With NetZero, ads will constantly bombard you from the get-go because an ad immediately pops up while you're dialing into their servers and when you do get connected, the ad bar appears and is present for the duration of the internet session.

NetZero will remind your periodically to review the ads that have come up about every half an hour or so. If you do not do so, a warning will pop up another half an hour later stating the connection will terminate unless you click on "OK." It is definitely annoying.

The connection does connect at 56k but performance lags for some reason; I would say the culprit stems from the bloated ZCast program that NetZero provides for Internet access.

In conclusion, I was very dissatisfied with the direction that NetZero is heading. When they first began, their ZCast program did not have a great hit on system performance. Now, their ZCast program is bloated beyond belief, sometimes slowing system performance to a crawl. The ad banners were obtrusive at times but the pop up messages were the most annoying at all. For those looking for good service through a Free National ISP, I would highly suggest looking elsewhere. For a more pleasant Free ISP experience give Spinway a try <a href= http://www.spinway.com > Spinway</a>.



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