Most of the free isp's we knew and loved went out of business

• Worldspy, one of the first to go
• Ifreedom, bought by Netzero
• Free Internet.com (or freei.net) Bought by Netzero
• Spinway (provided ign.com, oneramp.com, nettaxi.com etc with access)
• 1stup (altavista.com, lycos.com, and a whole bunch of others)

Maybe there were more, but now we're left with the worst 2. Juno and ofcourse, Netzero.

--Juno's software just takes up lots of ram, and is complicated to set up, even if they say its easy.

Oh yeah, www.dotnow.com is still around, but good luck trying to get a local access numbers in lots of towns.

One thing that hasn't happened though, is Netzero improving, sure, they might have more access numbers, but thats it! It still sucks. And having had used it for 2 weeks after Altavista access was taken away, i've noticed other reasons why it sucks.

1. You have THIS to contend with every 10 minutes. First they give you their "nice" reminder about their ads. 1 minute later: BAM. They hit you with the warning. If you like to play Online games, you better save up your money and pay for access, because you'll be disconnected before you know it.

2. Dialup errors. They just suck. Not only are they annoying, but the phone company charges you every time you try to go online. This happens especially during peak times.They make it seem like its your fault.

3. Those damn commercials you have to sit through each time you want to log on. All it does is take up more ram!

3. Deteriorating speed. I noticed that after an hour, i go from downloading something at 4k to 2k. It doesn't matter what server i download from. Even webpages go slower.

4. The rest. Its got that huge banner ad with buttons that are supposed to serve some use, but they just end up being more ads. And speaking of ads, i kept going to websites and got half.com pop ups coming out of nowhere! The sites i went to weren't even commercial sites. I looked up arthritis information for a report, and in between searching those damn pop ups showed up. Went to hotmail, same thing. Has anyone else noticed this?

The last "crack" i knew about doesn't work anymore (net.dll, open it with notepad and erase everything, then save) I read on a newsgroup that doing that to jpg.dll might work, but i don't know, since i never tried it out. I have cable modem access now :P . So, i no longer have to face the torture of dialup, and especially Netzero.

So, in closing, Netzero sucks, and always will. Free internet Access is just not worth it. If you're really cheap, try searching for an isp at CNET.

webmaster@netzerosucks.cjb.net