...With actual local access numbers.

Alright - cough 'em up. I'm sick of MSN's crappy service and flaky connections. And most of all, I'm tired of paying for access I only use when I'm out of town.

Net-Zero used to have, but they eventually realized that they couldn't actually give it away for free anymore - so it's more like 'Not-Zero' these days.

Help me out - the hotel lied... there's only 15 rooms with high-speed internet... and mine ain't one of them.

Oh yeah - I'm back on WinME - choke on that, Ace.

What's the big deal with Win ME? I used to use it and loved it. I don't know what everyone was complaining about because it ran perfect for ME

Netzero still has free access, you just only get 10 hours a month.

Try this list

Alister

Ace gave me crap about reloading WinME onto my laptop the other night when I mentioned I might have to 'downgrade' from Win2K, since my laptop is too old for Compaq to bother with driver support.

I personally like ME only because I don't have to reload a ton of drivers from various disks/CD that I have no idea where to even begin looking for. Otherwise, it makes my laptop run a little slower than 98SE.

ME is a fine OS , nothing wrong with it.

SHUT OP FOOL < OFF TOPIC! LOL

run nt or SE, skip the ME

ME is probably the worse, biggest POS ever to call itself an OS.

Get back on topic guys...

He's looking for a free ISP, not an OS suggestion...

I've been using newzero for years from free to $9.95, it's good but it's bad, no support, crappy ad intro, kick off every 3 hours but for $30 less a month I live with it, the e-mail connection is buggy too.

Google for free isp, and check the numbers with your location.

Umm - ya can't Google, unless you're online. Here's the story:

I loaded Win2K onto my ancient laptop (Compaq 1621 K6233) that only supported Win9X/ME, but my PCMCIA NIC had Win2K drivers. I was in a hotel that had promised free high speed internet, but kinda lied (DoubleTree Club). So, I was forced to go to dial-up... which meant reloading WinME to gain dial-up modem drivers.

Once I did that, I had to fuss with MSN for two hours trying to get a good connection that I wouldn't get hosed with long-distance charges billed to my room.

My question was posted after-the-fact from class the next day, to which I didn't have time to find it for myself. Plus, my patience had run out.

But, I finally found a good connection for MSN, and got through the ordeal.

The morale of this story is: don't go to DoubleTree Club hotels, unless you want to pay for your breakfast buffet and high-speed internet connection (only offered in the lobby) after being told it was free.

FYI - Courtyard by Marriott is the way to go... free broadband (in the room) and breakfast buffet too.

And to put the crappy OS argument to rest - how many of those other OS's already have the drivers necessary to run my laptop included in them? ME is the only one - trust me... I know this for a fact by personal experience in many reloads of my laptop trying to find the best OS for the machine.

I'll take the 'uncool' points over not being able to get online, because I can't use the driver disks that I can no longer find (since they're ancient and in a box somewhere at home). And you can't 'just get online and download the drivers,' if you can't get online in the first place because Win2K doesn't have a driver for your older integrated modem.

And I got the laptop for less than you paid for your video card several years ago.

Hmmm - let me think: damn-near free laptop and only one CD to load the OS (drivers and all)... who's the fool now?

You should have brought a knoppix CD with you...

Keywords = K6-233 and 96MB RAM.

Even Knoppix would've choked on this machine - it meets the bare minimum requirements. Plus, I'm not into learning a new OS on-the-fly while I have to get my junk up and running just to fill out my timesheet without getting dinged for being late.

Maybe I'll take the company laptop along next time as a back-up and do that.