Unlimited* 56k v90/92 Internet Access: (been waiting for this one) 550access gets the prize here with the most creative use of the word "unlimited." I just gotta quote their web site again. "Important: ▒Unlimited Access' means unlimited numr of times a user can connect. It does not mean a user can stay on for 24 hours a day seven days a week." Apparently this should be crystal clear. The real truth is, you get 150 hours a month, which amounts to about 5 hours a day. Bottom line, if you're a lightweight Internet user who actually has a life outside of the web, this will probably do you.
MSN also brags about their enhanced parental controls. Hence the man-butterfly in all of their commercials. In them you see a mom and kids walking down a street with the butterfly two steps ahead of them, covering up anything that may be offensive to the kiddies. Highly entertaining. Instead of just having a broad shield, you're able to fine-tune your settings to better fit your needs.
Are you getting the picture yet? Well, SeniorGlobe certainly is. Established three years ago, according to its online mission statement, "SeniorGlobe.com exists to provide those ages 55 and over the best possible community services and information resources that the web has to offer, for little or no charge." Their pages play host to an on-line community with forums, e-mail, connectivity, computer support, and free home web pages for seniors. They also put up articles written by members. Their mottos is, "By seniors, for seniors, about seniors, this place is ours!"
In the age of broadband it's sort of funny to see people trying to figure out ways to squeeze out a few extra bytes per second out of their dial-up. In my reviews I tend to avoid the speed issue, as my own phone lines sux (Serge says I can swear as long as I do it in Latin) and I'm not equipped to measure anybody�s benchmarks, so most of what I would offer (like I'm doing today) is hearsay. To satisfy your curiosity about how your kbps stacks up, you can have your surfing speed measured at numion.com.
If you want to get dial-up access through Sprint - have to get it through Sprint - then go to the Earthlink site, but do not visit the Sprint site. What you will find there is the appearance that they themselves provide dial-up service, but it's quite obvious that if indeed they do, they don't give much of a hoot about it any longer, preferring to let the low-end rabble slide over to Earthlink.
It seems that as a society we've just about forgotten what excellence looks like. So awash are we in mediocrity, that anyone who rises slightly above is instantly hailed as most excellent. Then a Michael Jordan comes along, a Tiger Woods, a Stephen Hawkings, or a Yo-Yo Ma, and suddenly we realize that maybe in our attempt to avoid disappointment, we've set the bar too low, lowered our expectations too much.
To write a review, it's important for me to understand how people utilize the net, so that I can best see whether the needs of the public will be met by what each ISP offers. That's exactly how I explain myself to my wife when she catches me engaged in seemingly random surfing, which I prefer to call research (surfing is not a billable activity). I mean how am I going to understand what the public needs if I don't imitate its habits and it seems despite the growth of the net as a productivity tool, random surfing is still the preferred activity.
This is only my third review here, but I'm already loving this job. For developing an over-inflated sense of self-importance, nothing beats being the all powerful critic. Aside my career in the IT industry, I've had a few short-lived gigs as a film and theater critic, but was always getting in hot water for being. well, critical. You see it's like this: when you pan a blockbuster, quicker than you can reheat yesterday's popcorn, the theater owner who happens to buy the biggest ads daily on page 2 is on the phone reminding the publisher just who it is that paid to have his trophy wife's teeth capped.