Its not free, but it's not bad either
Written: Jan 01 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive unlimited access
Cons: limited nationwide availability
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| heiderj's Full Review: NetWORLD Connections, Inc. |
Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll say I'm a cheap s.o.b. Therefore, it should surprise no one that I don't feel any compulsion to pay upwards of $20 a month for internet access. To a large extent, I don't even care how good or how fast the service is, either, (I'm not exactly trying to watch movies on the net or anything) so justifying your $40 a month by saying it's 25 times faster doesn't wash.
So, stumbling through the classifieds one day, I saw an ad that seemed too good to be true - unlimited internet access for $79 a year - that's right, less than $7 per month. My previous ISPs were either free (through the university) or looking at imminent fraud prosecution, so I thought, what the hey, I'll take a shot. Worst case, I lose $79. Best case, I save that much over the course of the year.
In the end, everything has worked rather well. From my previous house, I regularly connected at 53k, and didn't have any problems with busy signals or being booted off the line. Once we moved north, he connections max out at 26k, but that may be more because we live out in the boonies than Networld's fault. I still need to check with them on that. There were some busy signals at peak times for a while, but you could still usually get through on redial.
Most importantly, they haven't double billed my credit card, or billed me in advance of when they should, or added service charges that they didn't say anything about in the contract. My previous ISP (Santek) did all these things, so it's a relief not to have to deal with that.
On other matters, I haven't been able to get a personal homepage up and running - Networld doesn't provide help with this so much as they give you the site and allow you to use it. That means going out and getting FrontPage or something and spending far more time than I'm currently interested in investing. Still, you've got 5 MBs, so if you get the urge, you've got some room. I haven't tried to call tech support or customer service yet, so I can't really comment on that, but they are nice enough to send out e-mails telling you when their hours are changed for holidays and such.
I'm not sure how widely available Networld is, but they claim to be ever-expanding. For those of us who don't need the cost of a high-speed connection, don't want an annoying front-end roadblock like AOL, and don't want to pay a national ISP like Mindspring their small fortunes in access fees, Networld is a darn good bargain.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79/yr
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Epinions.com ID:
heiderj
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Member: Jeff Heiderscheit
Location: Austin, TX
Reviews written: 48
Trusted by: 18 members
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