I Need a New ISP...

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "2"]I need all of the help that I can get to give me some ideas & names of an internet provider that is the best (FASTEST) for the cheapest price.

To start off, I am disabled & haven't been able to work since 2002 & we live on very tight budget, that's why I can't afford to pay a whole lot for the net.
I never hardly use my PC because I don;t have the patience to sit & wait for minutes & minutes & my wife only uses the PC no more than an hour per day, because web surfing is soooooo slow.

I am currently using dial up (Granny Gear Slow) from BellSouth that is $20+ added to my monthly phone bill.
As far as I'm concerned, Dial up is dial up, no matter how much it cost & how fast the provider claims it to be. I have used the basic AOL & the AOL with the claimed to be "accelerator" for $5 more which did nothing, along with NetZero, Juno, Earthlink, Netscape, & a couple more, & not one was any better or faster than the next. PeoplePC is junk all together & attempted to rip me off, along with that, it's located in India and ran by a bunch of untrustful thieves.

2 years ago, we had cable i-net along with our TV, but not we have satellite TV thru Dish Network. Bellsouth said that we couldn't get DSL, because the fibro optic cable hasn't been installed in our area.

Google has came out with this Google Web Accelerator and after using it for a few months, I have found out that turning the Google Web Accelerator off will increase my download speeds of at least 150x, when it's turned on everything takes forever to download.When my wife goes on the net under her name, all of her pages download maybe 1000-2000x slower than mine.
I always keep our temp i-net files cleaned out, I've ran an unnecessary Defrag on Safe Mode, ran all sorts of scans on the system & it's free from any virus.

I have had so much help from Windows BBS in the past. I used visit here very frequent, but I forgot my user name & password.

Is there a program out there that I don't know about that I can install to speed up my downloads ??? I feel like I have tried everything. I ususally download web "accelerators" for www.download.com

Please someone help me with this problem.

Thanks to all in advance for any help that be given to me ![/SIZE][/FONT]

 

Usfamily.net is nationwide. Call 1-800-300-4256 to see if they can help you. Dial-up costs about $9 /mo.

 

I only pay $25 a month for my cable Internet connection. Do you have a yellow pages listing of the local broadband ISPs (Internet Service Providers) in your area? Sometimes they will have a package discount if you combine phone service/cable TV/Internet services.
Johanna

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "2"]Thanks to both of you, sparrow and Johanna for your replies !


sparrow,
Thanks for your reply, but the problem I'm having is that I would like to get rid of the dial up service all together because it's so slow and that's why I just don't have any interest in using the net.

I would be willing to stay with a dial up service if I could just find some way of speeding it up some. I know it will never be as fast as the cable net I had a couple of years ago, but it's just ridiculously slow sometimes and as I mentioned in my post, when my wife uses the net under her name, hers is at least 1/2-1/3 slower than when using the net under my name. Both of us only surf the net and send & receive email and that's it.

Why is it so slow when clicking on her name to get to her desktop ?

Johanna,
I live in a suburb of Birmingham, Al, so there should be plenty of i-net providers listed in the Yellow Pages, but I don't want to give up my satellite TV. I use to have cable TV and yes, we could get the cable net for only $19.95 a month, but the cable TV went up so much for digital cable w/a DVR box, it costs around $80 + per month not counting the i-net. Around here, there is one major cable TV company & they pretty much coontrol about 90% of all areas. I can get cable net thru them for about $30 a month and still keep my satwllite TV, but that's just a little too much, but we may just have go with that at a later date. The ISP we have now is in with our phone & we're paying $20 a month for the i-net now plus $27 for the phone.

I know that this doesn't sound like it is a big problem & not much money, but like I said, I'm on Disability & we have to make every penny count.

Is there anyone that knows aanything about getting DSL thru our existing satellite TV system ? I've been told that this can be done and that way it doesn't matter if an ISP has a fiberoptic cable in our area or not.

I'm not trying to get something for nothing, I;m just trying to get the best I can get for what we can spend.[/SIZE][/FONT]

 

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/our_products/internet_access/index.shtml

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/our_products/internet_access/faq/index.shtml

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "2"]Whiskeyman,
Thanks for the links. That really helped me out to see what kind of options I had going thru DishNetwork satellite TV.

After wandering around their site, looking to see what kind of charges they had, I ran upon this:
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/...ess/high_speed/satellite_internet/index.shtml

There is no way that i can nor would I if I had money to burn, pay $49.95 for the lowest side and $79.95 for the best (Platinum) of i-net service + another $199 equipment rental fee.

What ticks me off is that there is some people out there that is paying these prices.

Is there ANYTHING I can do to speed up my existing dial up ? [/SIZE][/FONT]

 

Not really. It is what it is. It seems to me that you have to recognize your limitations at this juncture. You've tried several ISPs and not found anything satisfactory. You've tried accelerators (which really don't accomplish much anyway) and found them to be the same. You're unwilling to part with your DISH television to go for a cable bundle. So, you're going to have to be content with the spotty, slow service that your current ISP provides. In my estimation it boils down to priorities and budget. You've established your pecking order... DISH network first and computer connection second. That being the case and the restrictions of your budget adding to the equation, you're going to have to be content with what you have.

Furthermore, why should it tick you off that others are willing to pay for these services? My wife and I actually dumped the DISH for basic cable and the bundled internet package. We happen to like it and yes.. we do pay a bit extra for it. But that is how we prioritize things, obviously differently than you. We're not all the same. Our circumstances, both financial and otherwise are different. Rather than being aggravated by what others are doing, I think you need to focus on yourself and determine what is best for you.

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "2"]James,

One thing straight right now before this goes any further. If you don't like my post, why don't you focus on yourself & don't worry what I have to say, just read it & just keep on going without replying.

My first priorities in life is:

My wife & my health & paying for my perscriptions + groceries
Feeding my pets
Power bill
water bill
TV
phone
internet

Having the cable TV/i-net bundle is not what I was even talking about when I said it ticks me off. I guess that I should have worded it that it ticks me off for DishNetwork to charge $49.95-$79.95 just for satellite DSL + another $199 equipment rental fee + whatever you're paying for satellite TV, in which I pay $$49.95 a month for the TV. That would cost me at least $99.90 just for i-net/TV and then the $199 equipment rental. That is so ridiculous that it should be down right illegal to charge those prices. It's stupid of someone to pay that unless it's the only option open to them.

As far as you and your wife going with the basic cable TV/i-net bundle, that is great. I did the same thing when I was living at home and when I moved out, my mom continued that service up until June 2007. She never used the net, so she gave the PC to me and that's where we are today.
My wife and I also started out with cable TV when they had a package deal that included:

Digital Basic cable
3 movie channels
Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for 2 rooms

all for $52.68 a month, all taxes included for 1 year. Well after that year we decided that we really liked the digital cable & really liked the DVR box. I called & ask how much $$$ it would be to keep just the Basic cable w/the DVR & that we wanted to drop the 3 movie channels & I was told that the price would stay the same, $52.68 and I said YES, we would keep it. A month later, they never turned off the 3 movie channels, so I called & was told they would turn them off, well they didn't and we got a bill for $92.xx. I called twice & was told a diffrent price for what we wanted, with the last price being $72.xx a month just for basic cable W/DVR, so I dropped the cable and went with the satellite from DishNetwork, where we pay $49.95 a month for the "group 3" package + all encore movie channel + DVR box.

I would like very much to have the cable i-net for $30+ a month & keep the satellite TV. Maybe in the future when I don't have so many perscriptions to buy because my insurance won't pay for all of them, then I will get the cable, but as far as cable TV goes, I will never have it again. They just keep on & on raising their prices for cable & their service sux around here if you need something. If I lived somewhere else that used a different cable company & the price was competative with satellite, I would consider it, but I stuck here in Birmingham, Al and the cable TV sux here.[/SIZE][/FONT]

 

Chill, Chris. I was actually trying to assist you but you're simply not in the mood. What I couldn't understand was why you would be ticked for other folks paying for these services. The bottom line as I mentioned before is that there is no real alternative for you to consider realistically. You're tried them all as you've readily admitted. There are no more options.

I wish you well. Truly.

 

[FONT= "Comic Sans MS"][SIZE= "3"]James,
Sorry about the mood, realy. I hate to blame something else for the way I come across on some message boards, but these past couple of weeks I've been on a new med (Neurontin) along with my other meds for my chronic pain in my back + Fibromyalgia and it causes me to stay stressed/depressed about 99.9% of the time & I just haven't been myself at all. I'm really one of the nicest people you could meet in person, but sometimes what I'm thinking just don't seem to come out thru my fingertips to the keyboard, but I'm really sorry.

I just now recieved an email from my ISP, AT&T phone company & I downloaded a web acellerator & it did help a little & it's free. I am still going to check out the USFamily.net i-net that sparrow mentioned in the past reply. Maybe one day I can change it all together & go with the cable i-net, but I guess for now, I've reached my limit.

I'm also going to chek out some of the programs that clean everything up, such as HiJackThis etc.

Thank for your replies. [/SIZE][/FONT]

 

I'm really sorry about the pain and the effects from the new medication, Chris. I wish you well in this and hope that you will have some relief from it.

All the best (and please forgive me if my words were offensive to you).

 

Hi, Chris, If you have a pension or dissability card number you can get Tadaust broadband for $29.95 with 12gig download.
I had it with dial up and now with broadband, it Aust wide and has been trouble free for over 4 years.
Cheers Des.

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "3"]It's all OK. I know sometimes that words get misused or read differant from the way they were meant to be understood, but it's OK now that I've typed down the words correctly.

A few years ago, I had the same problem with someone on a back pain message board and words started to fly after about 4 days of disagreeing with with each other about if it's right/fair to start bow hunting for deer in Oak Mountain State Park here about 15 miles out of Birmingham, Al. The deer in the park had NEVER been hunted & are so use to being around people that they don't even run when people come around within 100' from them. It was like shooting fish in a bucket. Well anyhow, this guy claimed that the deer needed to be hunted to lower the number of deer in the park and I thought it was down right cruel.
I don't believe in hunting in the first place and then to shoot and kill these deer that would just stand and look at you is about the most sinful thing that anyone could do. I am one of the biggest animal lovers there is there is. I mean if there were really to many deer in that park, then the State of Alabama should have some people come in & shoot & TRANQUILIZE the deer and relocate them.

Well I've got carried away as I always do when I start thinking about something that pertain to animals or race cars. Anyway, this guy decided to just agree to disagree with me because I would argue with a tree if it's something that I believe in so strongly.

As for my pain.....I've been on 10mg Methadone 4x a day since September 2002 for my pain and I've taken about every anti-depressant on the market since 2002 + all sorts of muscle relaxers & Benzos(tranquilizers). I started on Disability in 2002 @ the age of 31 years old, so you can just imagine how this has affected my mind, being that I was working full time & drag raced cars on the weekend & rode dirt bikes all my life and then I went to not being able to do anything physical, so the TV & computer became my full time life back then & you wouldn't never beliee how hard it is on the mind.
For the past 9 months I've had severe body aches from my meck down to my toes. My fingers ache all the time & Arthiritus has been ruled out thru testing, so 1 week ago, I went back to my Dr. and I've been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. With Fibro, the mind gets "foggy" which is called Fibro Fog, where I have a very hard time remembering things.
The Dr perscribed me Neurontin to try for the body aches & and some of the side effects are mood swings, irrtability, very very short tempered & confusion. These are the only side effects that I'm having, but there is about 50+ along with suicide in teens. If it will stop my body pain....OK, but if I don't see any change within a month, I'll quit taking it just like the dozens & dozens of meds in the past. I've seen 35 differant doctors since 1997 because of my back.

Sorry my post is so long, but I just kind of get carried away sometimes + I have a habit of being TOO specific.

Thanks again for posting ! [/SIZE][/FONT]

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "3"]demon,
Thank you so much for reply. I will check into this and see what I can find out. I just know that I wish I had something a little speedier than what I've got.

I don't even know what Broadband is.....LOL

Whatever I do, I'll for sure post back to BBS and let everyone know.

Thanks ![/SIZE][/FONT]

 

Chris,

I have xanadoo wireless internet service. all it requires is a network card in your computer (i bought mine at walmart for 14.00) and their wireless modem. the inital cost is about 50.00 for the modem but you do get that back as a rebate. basic service is 14.95 per month which gives you 128kbps download speed. don't know if they are available in your area but you can go to www.xanadoo.com and put in your zip code to see if it is available. No contracts with xanadoo it is on a month to month basis.


Check them out, hope all goes well for you.

Mitchell

 

[FONT= "Georgia"][SIZE= "3"]MitchellCooley
Now you're talking my language. This sounds as if were made for me.
I'll go to their site and see if it's available here & I''l post back with what I find out.

Thanks for the info.[/SIZE][/FONT]

 

[FONT= "Times New Roman"][SIZE= "3"] Well clicked on the link for XanaDoo and I get this
We're sorry. We're unable to determine service availability based on the address provided. Please call 1-866-XANADOO (866-926-2366) or visit your local Xanadoo store for assistance.

I should've known that something this good would not be available in my area. You'd think that living in the Birmingham, Al are Zip 35118, that I would have a wide choice to pick from weather it be cable TV, i-net, things to do in the city, etc, etc, etc, But we don't. Birmingham is the most worst off city anyone could go to. The only thing we have here is a steady crime rate & homicides.

We only have 2 cable TV companies around & one of them is not aloud to provide it's service but in maybe 10% of the homes & then we don't have the fiberoptic cable to receive DSL i-net.

I'll just shut up, no use in bashing the place, I've got to live here. I was just hoping so much that I could have gotten the Wireless I-net.

Thanks to everyone for all the replies. Maybe something will come along.[/SIZE][/FONT]