Yellowstone ISP= Fast, Furious, Free
Written: Sep 17 '00 (Updated Dec 20 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fast, fast, fast
Cons: small, annoying advert bar
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| greenspj's Full Review: Yellowstone.net (by 1stUp) |
12/20/00 NOTE: They went out of business.
Why use Yellowstone.net free ISP service?
We have been with Yellowstone now for about 4 months. We ended up with Yellowstone after trying about 4 other providers, free and not free. AOL free trial (BEWARE), Earthlink, local ISP for 9.99 unlimited, and (free) Juno. We either couldn't get them set up to run right, or the connection was unreliable or slow.
Yellowstone has so far, in our opinion, been the OVERALL best service of them all EVEN WITH the advertisements you have to watch.
Speed
Just today I was connected at over 46000. Typically, when I have bothered to look connections were over 42000. I believe that only once was I ever connected at under 40000. We are quite pleased.
I don't think that even with any of the "big boys": AOL, Earthlink, etc. can you obtain those kinds of speeds on a consistent basis.
Reliability of Connection
I don't remember any times when we were not connected on the first attempt. As far as being disconnected goes.... I log in about 3 times a day and my wife separately about 3 times a day. I have never heard a complaint from her about being disconnected. And I think I have been disconnected maybe twice in three months.
As far as I am concerned, this is the most reliable service I have ever used.
But the Advertisements, Right? What about them?
Well, nothing is really free now, is it? In order to use Yellowstone, you have to have a small toolbar at the bottom of your screen at all times with adverts flashing at you. However, the toolbar also comes with some additional nice search tools and convenient links (I dont use them, but I bet AOL users would like them.)
All in all there is probably less advertising going on than in AOL that costs 24.99/month unlimited.
In my estimation the toolbar is about one inch high and three wide. Your only options are to locate it at the top or bottom of your screen. It is ALWAYS on top. It cannot be hidden as long as your ISP connection is open.
We had a 14" monitor. With the advert toolbar, 14" was WAY too small. The open browser window was miniscule. However, we justified it to ourselves to by an Optiquest Q95 19" flat square monitor ($344 delivered!). Now, the advert bar is a NON ISSUE. We do not even notice it.
Essentially, the monitor was free with a 3-year "contract" with Yellowstone we tell ourselves using MSN reasoning. lol :)
Do You Have To Click on the Adverts?
There seems to be a new Yellowstone policy regarding the advertising. I have noticed in the last two weeks that Yellowstone will spawn a new browser window and ask you to "verify" wether you are still online by clicking on an advertisement.
Big deal. They are giving me at least a $10/month free service. The least I could do in return is click an advert. As soon as the advert new window appears, I just reduce it until I am asked again an hour later.
Oh, no!!!! They are asking me for 1 millisecond of my precious time to support their sponsors, those corporate fascists! lol j/k
PRIVACY
My wife and I are big privacy buffs. We will not sign up with anything where social and or phone are required fields for example and, yes, we often give bogus data. Scr@w the feds! You know? lol :)
Anyway, Yellowstone's privacy policy is IRON CLAD, as far as my wife is concerned. And if it makes her happy, it makes me happy. She is much more stringent about those things that I am.
In fact, in the sign-up process, you theoretically could give completely bogus data. That's what I would do, but my wife feels that she owes them a limited amout of real data about us so they can at least resell some to their corporate customers. So, she filled in enough that they could use to market to us, but never be able to identify us by name or connect our address to our name.
I think that's reasonable.
Disadvantages?
You know? I can't think of any in particular. I am quite happy with this service. If you have a 17" monitor, I think you could tolerate the advert bar. But if you have a monitor smaller than 17", I'd probably recommend skipping Yellowstone. With a 19" the advert bar is a non-issue. If you run a business via your ISP, I would go with a paid corporate ISP connection. No way would I risk it with a free or consumer account, reliable or not.
Other Info
Yellowstone uses first up software to run on. If you have had problems with first up on your machine or with your modem in the past, then maybe Yellowstone is not for you. We, however, found first up a piece of cake to install and configure.
I can't think of anything else.
Hopefully, this info was useful for you.
Best Regards.
And: STICK IT TO THE BIG BOYS - GO WITH THE FREE ISP - PROMOTE CONSUMER ORIENTED COMPETITION.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
greenspj
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Location: Las Vegas, LV
Reviews written: 48
Trusted by: 59 members
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