1. Well, for starters, you have to sit there and watch this commercial for a minute or so.

2. If it turns out that the first connection failed, the commercial repeats and you have to watch it again.

3. If NetZero goes to connect and does so successfully, but the commercial fails to play (which is a black screen), that screen will stay on the screen until you exit NetZero entirely. Exiting it isn't just a click of the X here. Sometimes it has to be done by the TASK MANAGER.

4. When your connection completes, the screen will remain there until the commercial finishes, sometimes much longer than the connection time. If it repeats, either by being shorter than the connection or failed connection, it will still have to finish the second time.

5. On a 800x600 resolution screen, which is what most people use, this box takes up a full quarter of the screen. Yes, that's ¼, 1/4, one-fourth of the screen. Trust me, you would not want to use the Internet with that much screen missing. Oh, and you can't drag the box off the screen, it stays within the screen ENTIRELY.

6. And last, but most certainly not least, the bandwidth sucking. This is what most people complain about. Dial-up is already slow enough as it is, but having NetZero downloading a big stash of commercials without the users knowledge sucks up a large chunk of bandwidth, or the amount of information that gets transfered over the phone line.

        What commercials do they show, you ask? Half the time they show commercials of their so-called "High-Speed 5x Faster" Internet for $5.00 more a month. Other times they show the commercial that says you can sign up for FEAR FACTOR and have a better chance of getting on being a NetZero user. And then the other times they just show Expedia.com ads and such.

                             Why Don't I care Anymore?

        After formatting my desktop, a horrible and life-changing experience, along with installing and reinstalling NetZero, I no longer have those pesky commercials. I disabled a lot of processes and have since not had any more commercials. Don't ask me how, I don't know. I still get the black screen, however.


The Connection Loss Issue:
        For the most part, I would say NetZero's connection is pretty stable. However, and most people also have this, it willAUTOMATICALLY DISCONNECT after a few hours, usually no more than four hours. What's up with that? Sometimes it'll happen after only an hour.
        Some people may not mind because they aren't on that long, but I'm an Internet freak. Four measly hours just don't cut it. Some nights, before I go to bed, I set up some songs for downloading on WinMX and they get cut off after a couple hours. I'm sure you people with DSL, Cable or T1-T3 connection will laugh at this, but four hours isn't enough time to download five songs on dial-up.
        If your setup has the IDLE feature, your connection will stop after a fixed amount of idle, or away, time. You can click the resume button within the one minute to keep your connection. But to keep that from happening, having current downloads - songs, movies, etc. - will keep it active. I have Avant browser and I can have a page refresh at any interval, which works, too.
        Here are the two screens that pop-up EVERY TIME Netzero loses it's connection:



        Your connection is ending, please wait...


followed by:


        Your dial-up connection has been lost for
        Unknown reasons. Netzero will now exit.

        Error Code: 20


Unknown Reasons? UNKNOWN REASONS? UNKNOWN REASONS?!.

Connection Speeds Vs. Download Speeds:
        NetZero's incoming speeds are not impressive, most of the time. It is, however, very consistent with it's connection speed. 95% of the time it will connect at either 48,000 bps or 49,333bps. Very rarely does it connect at a speed lower than that.
        One thing that still bothers me is how you can be connected at 49Kbps and only be able to do file transfers at 5Kbps. I download music almost daily, so my bandwidth is at the max all the time, giving me a clear view at actual incoming speed. The speeds vary from the usual, sustained 4Kbps to a rare high of 6Kbps.
        One day, not too long ago, my Internet freaked me out. I was downloading music and noticed that the bandwidth meter was registering at a mind-blowing 24,000bps, six times the normal speed. This speed is unheard of in dial-up history. To make sure it wasn't an error reading, I checked the connection monitor in the system tray and it was jumping up by large numbers. Don't expect this on your computer, for it only lasted for not even a minute. Still nice to dream though.

Free Vs. Platinum Vs. High-Speed:
        I'm sure most of you have heard of NetZero's FREE Internet service. If you can get free, why pay for it? Well, having used both, I made a little comparison chart of the Free vs. the Platinum membership.

                                         FREE Service:
PROS:
--> Free Internet access
--> 2MB of NetZero Email Storage & email address
--> Online Support

CONS:
--> No pop-up blocker
--> Only 10 HOURS/MONTH
--> HUGE BANNER across the screen (very noticeable)

                                       The PLATINUM:
PROS:
--> Only $9.95 a month (beats AOL)
--> 250 Megs of email store
--> Unlimited Internet use (YEAH!!)
--> No annoying banner
--> Offline email access
--> Online Support

CONS:
--> Still no pop-up blocker
--> To much junk mail from NetZero alone

                                         HIGH-SPEED:
PROS:
--> 1 GIG of email storage
--> Pop-up blocker, finally
--> Net Accelerator, supposedly 5x
--> All the glorious benefits of Platinum

CONS:
--> The "accelerator" is a misleading concept
     to the untrained, non-computer geek

Why Do I Oppose The "High-Speed" Concept?
        A lot of people see this offer for 5x Web Accelerator and think 'Wow, now I can download music and stuff 5 times faster with my dial-up'. That's not what happens, unfortunately, or I'd have it. HiSpeed NetZero states clearly:

"HiSpeed transmission rates are not faster than standard dial-up Internet service"

        It works by doing a few things to make websites seem to come up faster:

1. It stores common sites on the harddrive fast faster viewing. You can setup your computer to do that for free
2. Some pictures and text are compressed, possibly losing quality, to appear faster


What Can't Be Faster:

1. Anything streaming - music, videos, whatever
2. Any secure site, anything encrypted
3. Any attachments

        Overall, not worth it for the $5.00. What you can do is set up your Internet options to save certain things in pages. You can also go to cNet.com [download.com] and hook up with a free web accelerator that does the same thing.
        And just to clarify, DO NOT get HiSpeed in hopes of faster transfers!


THE END

============================================

Use NetZero & Still Answer The Phone With C-A-C Blue:
        When I first got NetZero, I was restricted to use it only at night because it would tie up the phone line from important calls coming in. So I looked around and found the CATCH-A-CALL BLUE, a box that lets you answer the phone while on a dial-up connection. You need call waiting for it to work, though, but it's only $4 a month to get important calls. When someone calls, the box rings and you can pick up the phone.
        Since NetZero software won't exit for a minute after hitting the X, I just pop the line out of the back of the box.
        Now I can surf the web with NetZero and answer any incoming calls.



Recommended:
Yes