- GETTING ON LINE -

The only way to connect to the Web is through an Internet Service Provider (ISP).  There are an ever increasing number of companies out there that provide this service (for a fee - of course!).  For a while there was a proliferation of `free' providers like "NetZero" and "Spiegel" and "Snap" - but they based their business on advertisers (and bombarded you with their ads) and eventually went south because the advertisers weren't getting any positive business feedbacks because the users hated the "pop-up" ads.

Leading the pack at the moment are "Earthlink" (my provider who bought out "Mindspring") and, of course, "America-On-Line" (whom I don't have much use for - and my apologies to all of you devout AOL customers!).  Other `front runners' are MSN (terrible customer support even though they are part of the `Microsoft' conglomerate), "Compuserve" and "Prodigy" who started at the beginning and are still great providers.  The list from here is endless - but the `local' providers seem to be doing a great job (until they go out of business or are gobbled up by one of the `big guys').

When looking for an ISP, first ask yourself what kind of connection do you want -- dial-up, cable, or DSL? The difference in these services is, of course, speed and money.

Cost may be a factor to some PC users looking for a provider and the going price for the cheapest service available, "dial-up", is about $20/month.   A dial-up connection is established through a modem (see Modems) in your PC that uses a normal telephone line, and sends and receives data at a rate of up to 56 KBps.

Beyond dial-up, there is cable and DSL (data services lines). The going rate for both is about $40/month. To get cable service, your local TV cable company has to have it available. DSL, however, is available from the "big guys" (like Earthlink) if your local telephone company supports it. The speed increase in log-ons, downloads, etc. with cable and DSL is about 5X over a 56K modem (if you are actually connecting at 56K). The impairment to cable speed is that you are sharing it with your neighbors and on busy days your connection may not be much faster than a modem. DSL, however, is usually hanging in there at 280KBps (five times faster than a modem connected at optimal speed -- which doesn't happen very often).

"DSS TV" PC internet service is also on the horizon -- so don't forget the future!