How to do things for free with your computer

FREE INTERNET ACCESS/ FREE E-MAIL

Modified 12-27-01 & 2-9-2005
This site shows that Juno & Netzero are the only free access ISP's left in Vegas. Check your area.
This site shows none anymore. This one also reviews current free ISP's. Mentions Netzero, not Juno.

My favorite for ease of use - Juno. Yes they started FREE unlimited Internet access on Jan 1, 00. They are now limiting free access to 12 hours per month or less (many are changing rapidly) and may institute some other requirements soon. Read the fine print in the agreement. In 2005, Juno is limiting the free service to on-line access only. If you want to download e-mail into your computer, you have to buy the premium service.
Then there is Netzero that has been around for some time. All seems well with them for now, but limited to 10 hours a month down from 25.
Netzero and Juno (now under same ownership) both have unlimited paid service for $9.95/mo.

Juno & Netzero are available on CD or can be downloaded from the web. I have never had a problem with Juno. USE CAUTION INSTALLING ANY OF THESE. As always, be sure you have any important data backed up before installing new programs. Many of these modify IE to add a menu bar with nice shortcuts and web links.
With all of these FREE ISP's, the price you pay is an ad banner on the screen. It can be placed so it is not intrusive on some of them. You may also get some spyware. Check it out.

I do have INSTRUCTIONS to delete Juno's static ads. The banner ads are live feeds and not deletable. Note: this method only deletes the pop-up ads seen when starting the program, not the ad banner. Each time you access your e-mail, part of the download is a set of ads that are stored in the Juno\ads folder. All this does is delete the folder. Juno puts it back every time you get your mail. Click here for instructions. 2007 note: since you can't download free mail to the computer, this may be a mute point. Don't know if they throw ads at you in the paid version. If so, then this should still work to delete them.

These are the sites for just free e-mail and I haven't verified them for a while. All of the free access sites above provide an e-mail address. You can choose to use it or get a free e-mail with another site as well. It is actually useful to have 2 addresses.
I really like Yahoo and have been recommending it. It has some nice features. The best is that your address book is stored on Yahoo's computers. This means you can go to any computer that has Internet access and check your mail and address book. One nice feature is that if you buy a new computer or upgrade, you don't have to worry about transferring the address book from old to new.
Here are links to some of the free e-mail systems.
Yahoo Netscape Hotmail mail.com Excite Lycos

Go to http://www.mauimail.com/ if you want a Hawaii address
A quick search of the web for "Free e-mail" will find many more

CAUTIONS

A couple of disadvantages to the free on-line E-MAIL systems are:
1. You must be on line and the operations can be a little slower waiting for actions on line.
For example, adding an entry to the address book takes longer than using an address book in your own computer.
2. Mail is stored on the host computer (Yahoo) and space may be limited. Yahoo & Hotmail keep adding more space. Yahoo now has 1.0 GB. More than I will ever use because I keep my junk deleted. Check the space limits for updates. They are all over the place now considering how cheap mass storage has become.
If you need to receive or send large files or want to keep all your messages, you should probably consider a paid service although Hotmail now allows 10MB file transfer.
Many Coffee Shops have Computer Kiosks in many of their cafes with Internet access. This would give you the access needed for e-mail and you could check it as you get your daily fix, er cappuccino. Of course, anyone reading this probably has web access. How about printing this out for your friends and family members that you want to get into the e-mail world.
How to print this page

 

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