Well, the cable thing I mentioned earlier is moot: TWC just kicked my
friend off their service.

So, since I still have Internet, I went looking for low-cost Internet
solutions.

Naturally, most of the free ISPs went belly-up when the dot.coms' bubble
burst, and the ones that remain really make you *pay* for the "free"
service.  Juno.com and NetZero.com merged together and ate Bluelight,
forming a new company called United Online.  Juno/NetZero limit you to 10
hours a month, but if they decide that you use too much Internet, they
cut you off completely (though E-mail access is still free).  And while
you use what little Internet they let you have, you have an ad-bar taking
up the top sixth of your screen.

Address.com is the worst.  While technically there are no time limits,
they treat your Internet surfing like broadcast TV: you agree that every
half hour, your entire screen will be taken up by a fullscreen animated
ad for at least ten seconds, sometimes thirty.  They don't put anything
else on your screen, but they fill your hard drive with spyware (name a
spyware and Address.com installs it) and require you to read your E-mail
(i.e., their spam) on yourname@address.com at least twice a month or they
cancel the whole account.

Then I found this interesting site, called Access-4-Free
(http://www.access-4-free.com/).

They, like Juno/NetZero, offer a "10 hours free per month" account, with
a $4.95 setup fee.  And if you stay below 10 hours a month, thats all
you'll ever pay.  If you exceed your ten hours a month...no. come out
from under the bed, its actually a SANE billing scheme...they charge you
$1 an hour for the next ten hours of Internet you use above your free 10
hours.

And any Internet you use beyond 20 hours is...stop hiding under the bed! 
they're really nice people!...free and unlimited.  Thats right, the most
you pay each month is $10 a month.  If you use 15 hours, you pay $5.  11
hours?  Pay $1 for that month.  So while you still have to provide them
with a credit card number, the billing system is extremely fair and
equitable.  There is tech support available at this level of access, 24/7
but for the nearly-free account it is $5 per incident.

And what makes this message on-topic is that there is no special software
for your Access 4 Free account.  Which means that Linux users can enjoy
an Access 4 Free account using whatever dial-up software they want.  You
can pppd your connection and read your E-mail using your favorite
POP3/SMTP client such as Evolution.

Naturally, if you think you'll always use more than 20 hours a month, you
can sign up for their $10 a month plan, which means you pay out $10 a
month regardless of how much you use.  And the $10/month plan includes
the 5X surfing thingy most other places offer, as well as *free* 24/7
tech support.  If you want the 5X thingy on your nearly-free account, you
can add it for $3 a month.

I found a site which has a bunch of user reviews.  Overall most people
like this service, a rarity in the cheap ISP market.  A few recent
problems, but most people seemed to like it, and the sysadmin of
Access4Free reads the forum postings and replies to them.

FreedomList original website: http://tinyurl.com/3eqnq

User Reviews of Access 4 Free: http://tinyurl.com/yrugz

Hey, if nothing else its a great backup ISP to have, and a decent travel
ISP.  There are numbers accessible to KCKS/MO, and in most major cities
around the U.S.  

(I used http://tinyurl.com/ to shrink the original websites down to
something that wouldn't break in an E-mail).

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