Western Railroad Discussion > Internet ISP for railfanning

Earthlink is really starting to rag me off. The last two upgrades to their vaunted Total Access 2005 software has really screwed up my Favorites folder and last night the tool bar upgrade has gotten the e-mail portion in abyssmal shape. Support has been unable to rectify the problems caused by their software upgrades. Earthlink disables the Wi Fi card in my laptop when it senses a signal since I am not paying for high speed at home. Never mind the fact Earthlink cannot provide high speed in my neighborhood, they still make it impossible for me to access hot spots across the country anyway.

Their support is now exclusively a chat system where an autonomatron tries to give canned answers to problems derived from word searches. It is cumbersome, frustrating and not usually successful.

I have found the 7000+ local access dial up numbers across the country very useful while traveling and I would hate to lose those by going to a local ISP.

So here is the question, what is a good or even great ISP with a national account that still treats customers like human beings, provides reliable service and support and allows access across the country in back woods bergs along the right of way?

Thanks for your input.

In order to keep this from slipping to the second page too soon I will post replies as an edit to this post.

Mr West, ATT is not an option since the only two cities in Montana with local access are Billings and Great Falls. I considered ATT when I went to Earthlink but they are unwilling to provide service in Missoula, Butte, Kalispell, Bozeman or Helena, thus ignoring over 50% of the population of the state. I see they have not changed their policies in the last 6 years.

Mr agentatascadero, I am glad I am not the only one who has noticed the increasing problems.

fbe Wrote:
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> Earthlink ....
> I have found the 7000+ local access dial up
> numbers across the country very useful while
> traveling and I would hate to lose those by going
> to a local ISP.


Y'know, I was on the road for a couple of weeks in June, looked up lots of local access numbers and couldn't get my earthlink dialer to accept any of them. I ended up having to use the 800 number in a lot of places where I shouldn't have.





> So here is the question, what is a good or even
> great ISP with a national account that still
> treats customers like human beings, provides
> reliable service and support and allows access
> across the country in back woods bergs along the
> right of way?



I have no idea, but why do I suspect you ask for the moon and the stars and all the ISPs can actually offer is a Moon Pie, or a mooning (dropped drawers variety)?

BobE

All I really am asking for was the service Earthlink was providing me about two years ago. Good local access across the country, Wi Fi when it was available, support from technicians who could solve the problem via e-mail or on the phone and upgrades to software that improved service. I had it once and now it is gone, though the name remains the same.

I have been using AT&T Worldnet for many years and have had no problems. I recently upgraded to AT&T DSL at home, and that package also allows me to continue to use their dial up numbers nationwide. Based on quite a lot of travel, their local (free) dialup converage is pretty good, and they have an 800 number that can be used about anywhere at ten cents a minute. So far as I can tell their software does not interfere with wireless hotspots, since I have a wireless network at home and occasionally use hot spots. Their service includes the usual package of virus protection, spam filters, and server space for web sites. Their service is probably not the cheapest, but it has been reliable.

JBW

I’ll jump in on this one. The ISP that I have been using for the last few years is Power Net Global. I have dial up with them and cable modem with Comcast. The reason I mention this is my work supplies the Comcast and I piggyback on it. I can hook up at hotspots any ware and there are many dial up opportunities. If content is what is needed I don’t think it fits. My cost is 9.95 per month for unlimited service. I have 3 800 numbers with them and my total bill is usually less than 20 bucks per month. Check them out.
pngusa.net.

{pngusa.net}

I, too, am dumping Earthlink ASAP, but perhaps for a differant reason: I can't stand the useless (and worse) tech support from Hell, I mean Pakistan. I went with a local provider so as to be asssured of American tech support in the English language. I hadn't thought about the chalenge of going on line during travel, but then again, I don't travel much. I don't know if it was roll out of total access, or the separation from USAA that did it, but this company has gone to seed or worse.

You may play hell in getting support from the good old USA
from any ISP now.

I have sbcglobal.net and works fine, but the set up
was shear hell with India!

mundo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You may play hell in getting support from the good
> old USA
> from any ISP now.
>
> I have sbcglobal.net and works fine, but the
> set up
> was shear hell with India!

I, too, have SBC Global. Had a recent problem. Called tech support (India) couldn't make any progress there and asked for second tier support. That call was picked up in the States and led to finding the problem and the eventual solution. The problem turned out to not be an SBC issue, but the techie helped me figure it out.

Don Hall
Yreka, CA

I really understand what you are going through with Earthlink. They USED to be my ISP, but no more. I, too, was disgusted with what passes for customer "service" on Earthlink. I like to read science fiction, and there is something I think is called the “Turing test”. no mere machine could talk and act in the way in which adult human beings do. The humans who answer the Live Chat questions for Earthlink answer questions as though they are computers. Shame on Earthlink!!

Here is a page with more info on the Turing Test:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/

When we were on Earthlink dial-up, we noticed a while ago (a year? I think) that they had begin a really STUPID policy of DISCONNECTING your dial-up connection after 12 continuous hours on line. Sheesh!

And their e-mail – gad!! What a JOKE! They REFUSED to filter spam, even when I set my filter at Medium. The only GOOD thing about Earthlink e-mail – and it is VERY good! :) - is that they break ALL clickable links in spam messages. That is VERY VERY good. But the layout of the e-mail is not very user-friendly, and it makes the e-mail harder than it should be to use. I do say: Good-bye, Earthlink I am very happy that I no longer have to deal with Earthlink.

My advice is to find a local ISP who will give you decent service, and not worry about the service you might not get when traveling – unless you spend a huge amount of time traveling.

Margaret (SP fan)

MargaretSPfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I really understand what you are going through
> with Earthlink. They USED to be my ISP, but no
> more. I, too, was disgusted with what passes for
> customer "service" on Earthlink. I like to read
> science fiction, and there is something I think is
> called the “Turing test”. no mere machine could
> talk and act in the way in which adult human
> beings do. The humans who answer the Live Chat
> questions for Earthlink answer questions as though
> they are computers. Shame on Earthlink!!
>
> Here is a page with more info on the Turing Test:
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/
> >
> My advice is to find a local ISP who will give you
> decent service, and not worry about the service
> you might not get when traveling – unless you
> spend a huge amount of time traveling.
>
> Margaret (SP fan)
>
>
> We live in Prunedale,north of Salinas CA. I have been on AOL dial up since 1994 when we still lived in San Jose. We just upgraded our PC and laptops (Dell) and wanted to get on high speed DSL. Because of where we live, we cannot get SBC, Comcast,Earthlink, Charter yadaydaydayayd,but guess what, our neighbor 3 doors down on the court, is the founder and owner of Redshift here in Monterey County which brings DSL or High speed whatever to those of us, including himself, who don't get the rest of the world.Does this man have a gold mine?? Yes. But he also charges similar and apparently in some cases less than the companies I cited above. So we have Redshift wireless for DSL. I have kept our AOL because I don't want to go through the hassle of changing e-mail addys and we travel a lot with our laptop and using AOL is very friendly wherever we go and I don't get into long distance charges. AOL costs us about $250/year so it is worth keeping just for the no hassle reasons.
> The nicest part of all of this recent conversion to wireless DSL is that I can do my "computing" while listening to WGMS the classical FM station in Washington DC--------glorious!
C.
>

Although expensive, I recently upgraded my Verizon Wireless card in my notebook and I am getting DSL speeds from anywhere. I am talking around town, in the desert, at home, in the car. Verizon is in the process of upgrading their entire system for this high speed internet on the go. It runs $79 a month. If you can justify the expense it is well worth it.


Todd Clark

webmaster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Although expensive, I recently upgraded my Verizon
> Wireless card in my notebook and I am getting DSL
> speeds from anywhere. I am talking around town, in
> the desert, at home, in the car. Verizon is in
> the process of upgrading their entire system for
> this high speed internet on the go. It runs $79 a
> month. If you can justify the expense it is well
> worth it.
>
>
> Todd Clark


I'll second this Todd. I have to have a wireless card for my laptop as I have to be able to log into servers from where ever I am at. At $79 per month, it is well worth it.

While they are regional ISP, DSLExtreme.com here in California are quite good. I maintain a dialup account with them as a backup for my laptop, although I have never used it. I do use the e-mail for testing when working on client issues.

I do know they must belong to some sort of national network as they do have nation wide dial up numbers available.

While they may not be able to provide DSL in your state, maybe give them a call anyways as like I said it appears they belong to some national network and therefore may be able to give you a reference.

I guess I am not the only one that has had it with Earthlink. I have not had E-mail service for 9 mos. They say they can only figure out how to get my internet access back. Even with an allegedly "direct" number to one of their "problem specialists" you still have to deal with the towelheads in India, Pakistan, or whereever they got the lowest price this week. Andy2472

Stick with earthlink (dial up or high speed dsl). But do NOT use their total access.

If you are using XP (sp2 and don't update)
use outlook (not outlook express) or thunderbird and use a good
Virus filter (Norton professional is my choice of several years)
spam filter (spambayes does a magnificant job

for a browser use IE or Mozilla with
a good firewall (norton is good and it keeps your line alive)
a good spyware (counterspy)
a good second addware filter (I use spybot)

Keep them up to date weekly and pay the yearly charges.

total access is junk and is only for those that just bought a computer and are starting from day one.

r