Best For Now
Written: Dec 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fairly reliable and Free.
Cons: Pop ups every fifteen minutes, Zero Port ad bar
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| shadomir's Full Review: NetZero |
Is Netzero For you?<br>
Netzero is one of only a few surviving free ISP's out there.
So if you want free, you really have very little choice.
One other choice is Juno, but for me Juno is horribly unreliable,
I can almost never connect to Juno, and I get cut off if I do connect to Juno, so I really have no choice but Netzero or to pay. If you can afford to pay, try Prodigy. I liked Prodigy better than any ISP I have ever tried. But if you need free, right now (December 2000), Netzero is the best one available.<br><br>
Pros<br>
Netzero is fairly reliable, most of the time I can connect first or second try, although when I first used it it seemed flaky, and I still get connection errors that say Protocol_Not_Configured, or other dialing errors which have nothing to do with reality. If you get these errors,
try to ignore them and just try to connect again. Of course you will have to sit through their little TV commercial every time you try to connect, so I half wonder if the problems connecting are there just to make you have to watch the commercial several times. But that's just my paranoid mind, right? <g><br><br>
Cons<br>
Netzero will disconnect sometimes after a couple hours and say it can't continue, so long downloads will get interupted. You have to be there to click every 15 minutes or it will shut down, so you can't walk away form downloads.
You will have to put up with an ad bar that is on your screen all the time. This means it is always in the way, and if you try to move it out of your way the program will close down. Also, if you can't play any online games which normally fill the screen, as the Zero port, as they call it, will think you are trying to cover it up and disconnect you. Every fifteen minutes, a message will pop up saying "Did you know you can click on the ads?" Of course you know, but that doesn't stop them from irritating you every few minutes. Then five minutes after, you will have another pop-up which says it is going to disconnect you unless you press resume. It feels like these pop up every five minutes, but really you get ten minutes before the first pops up, then five minutes before the second pops up, then ten minutes, then five.....you get the idea. You will not get to surf the web in peace, and if you are trying to type when these pop up, it will
interfere. But the service is free, and they want you to click on their ads to pay for the service. I have news for them, poor people don't have money to spend on these sites that are paying for the ads. That's why they use free internet. Until I see ads which have items for under $1.00, or pay me, I won't be clicking many. Sadly this may mean the end of free internet, unless they move to commercials the way TV does, and don't require clicking anymore. If there are more pops though, I will stop using free service and go back to paying or not use the internet. If they could design a banner ad that was vertical and could be put on the side instead of horizontal, it would be much better and put out of the way. Let's start suggesting the idea and hopefully companies will do this.<br><br>
Overall<br>
Overall, I would recommend Netzero, it is the best free service you will find currently, at least that I know of, but the annoying pops every ten and fifteen minutes are irritating enough to make you want to pay for service if you can afford to, and almost even if you can't. For a free service, it is fairly reliable, but the banner box, or Zero Port, is too tall and gets in the way even when in it's smallest form. Try resizing your window so it is above of below, and be glad it is only minimally intrusive. I give Netzero a "B" overall. It could be better, but all others are worse. If Altavista comes back, their service was a good alternative, and you could play games online with their service, but they might disconnect you sometimes.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
shadomir
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 2 members
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