Juno... Free... Is it really worth it? (PART 1)
Written: Nov 19 '00 (Updated Nov 24 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free, very few problems with connection
Cons: Excruciatingly slow, constant advertising especially ones to get you to pay for your connection.
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| egab01's Full Review: Juno |
Review origionally written on 11/19/2000 -- now becomes (Part 1).
Ok so I see that 258 other people have reviewed Juno and have had similar experiences as me.
In the early part of 2000, I finally purchased a computer for my home. It is the first computer I have had at home in over 10 years (the last one I owned was an ADAM). Having a somewhat tight budget, my friend gave me a Juno disk to be able to access the internet for free. Funny thing was I was getting about 2 disks a month in the mail until about 10 weeks before I bought the computer.
I have now been using Juno’s free access for about six months and finally will be dumping it in the near future. I have a 56k modem but with Juno it might as well be a 14k (can’t find those anymore) modem, it is so excruciatingly slow. There is always a banner ad on the screen and since I don’t have a lot of screen real estate it really gets in the way, I am constantly having to move it around to do or see things on the screen. Also the banner is constantly flashing and changing ads, and it is designed to take priority over the rest of what you are doing adding to slowing things down. In addition after 2 months of use there became a semi-permanent 1/3 size pop up window every time I connect telling me to try JunoWeb for just $8.95/mo. for premium service. I can close this window but every time I have to go back to the Juno homepage, (I have not been able to change my homepage permanently), it pops up again.
I also have a Juno e-mail account, which I never use. The only mail I get on my Juno account is advertisements to get premium service from Juno or from one of their advertisers trying to sell me something. When I have gone to check the e-mail it takes so long to retrieve I usually get up and go do a house chore while waiting. The last it took almost 15 minutes to retrieve 6 messages. On the other hand I have been using Hotmail for almost 2 years and no matter how many messages I have it usually takes about a minute to retrieve my messages.
Now I must say Juno hasn’t been all bad; it is free and I rarely have problems getting a connection. When installing Juno they are not very clear about having to use a particular set of dial-up numbers so it took me a few tries to set up the service. Once I figured out that I had to use a specific set of numbers with the last four digits being all the same I found five numbers I could use in my area that were not toll numbers. Only on rare occasion I can’t get through on any of those numbers, but except for twice, I just wait a few minutes and try again and don’t have a problem. I usually have about 3 hours of connection before I am automatically disconnected. This is fine for me, however, a little annoying that I had to figure that out on my own.
I’m sure I could go on but I will stop here. Juno is a good service for someone with a tight budget, but all the advertising and the banner can be extremely annoying and browsing is very slow. In general I will not recommend Juno if you can find a better service that is free or can afford to pay for you connection.
Lastly, hen I move to my boyfriend's house we will be switching to ATT@home cable internet and I will let you know how that works out.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
egab01
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Member: Gabriella
Location: San Francisco, Ca
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 7 members
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