Big Dan
Saturday, January 12th, 2008, 11:23 AM
*http://www.bigdan.us/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/aoltwogp6.jpg vs.* http://www.bigdan.us/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/msnbutterfly2dd1.jpg
To make a long story short, I’m on vacation in Florida as mentioned in my previous post. My friend’s cable Internet had been shut off before I got here. For two weeks, I had been dialing into my roaming connection from Frontier, my DSL company back in New York because my friends have unlimited long distance it wouldn’t cost them a dime. Earlier in this week, the phone company turned off their long distance because they were calling a data line. I didn’t know it was against their contract. Not to mention the fact that I still barely got to use the connection because his wife is always on it.
So, I needed an Internet connection, I own several of my own sites and manage several others not to mention keeping an eye on my server. First I tried getting an account with one of the 3 local dial up companies all of them offered no introductory period and wanted 3 months up front. I wasn’t going to shell out $60 to use a connection for a few weeks. Knowing that I’m using Windows and by default MSN is installed, I decided to install MSN and see if they had a local number.
MSN does have 4 local numbers and a great introductory plan; 3 months free and $21.99/mo thereafter. Great I can use the connection while I’m here and leave it on for a couple of months after I leave then cancel it with no charge. I’m using their computer so I’ll just leave everything setup for them until they can turn the cable back on.
For a couple of days all was well, MSN worked fine at a blazing fast 44 kb/s http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif I got to check my emails and websites while his wife got to spend most of the day on MySpace.
Today their computer got repoed, it was one of those rent to own deals. No biggie, I had borrowed my sister’s laptop and could just install MSN right?
Well not really.. It kept asking me for an XP disc which is retarded because on their XP computer I was able to just install MSN through add/remove programs. So, since I’m on vacation and only brought my Ubuntu discs with me, I couldn’t do anything.
Now, I’m pissed no Internet connection for the next week or so.. So, I used Windows connection wizard and signed up for people PC which kept declining my credit card so I quit trying. Then I signed up for AT&T Worldnet, which took my credit card but didn’t have a local access number. This is really frustrating.
I remember when I cleaned out the dresser I’m using here that I ran across an old AOL CD. So I dug around for it, popped it in my computer and with a little finagling got it to work with 1175 free hours. What a piece of $#!t bloatware AOL is. Off the bat it sets itself to autostart which I guess is okay if you’re going to use it all the time. Then you cannot kill it’s processes via task manager, it’s 6 separate processes by the way. All of them are marked as system owned.. Only the browser is user owned. When you finagle enough to kill the processes they automatically restart.
On top of that AOL hides your connection speed, it took me no lie 5 minutes to load the homepage of my forum (www.ourdjtalk.com (http://www.ourdjtalk.com/)). I couldn’t even load Gmail’s login page, which isn’t a large page. I decided to download MSN from the website. That took over 2 hours to download 7 megabytes.
I finally got MSN downloaded and installed but this the MSN installer was only a shell now I’m connected to MSN downloading MSN Messenger and explorer at a blazing 40 kb/s. :eek:. It’s been going about 45 minutes, probably another hour left. Then maybe I’ll be able to check my Gmail.
Dunny thing is though, I actually like MSN the suite of programs and the way it works is nice. The only thing lacking is tabbed browsing but if I ran Windows at home, I’d actually use the suite without subscribing to the service.
AOL sucks, blows big donkey balls, I don’t see how anyone could want to use that crapware. MSN is okay though it’s a dail up connection so I certainly cannot blame the speed on MSN when I’m used to a cable connection.
If you’re ever traveling and need a connection in a hurry, MSN is the way to go. http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif Now, canceling the AOL account is going to be fun. http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif
If you like what you see buy thee a beer! (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=dan@bigdan.us¤cy_code=USD&amount=&return=&item_name=Buy+Me+a+Beer+for+MSN+&+AOL+The+Tale+of+Dial+up+connections)
More... (http://www.bigdan.us/just-me/msn-aol-the-tale-of-dial-up-connections.html)
To make a long story short, I’m on vacation in Florida as mentioned in my previous post. My friend’s cable Internet had been shut off before I got here. For two weeks, I had been dialing into my roaming connection from Frontier, my DSL company back in New York because my friends have unlimited long distance it wouldn’t cost them a dime. Earlier in this week, the phone company turned off their long distance because they were calling a data line. I didn’t know it was against their contract. Not to mention the fact that I still barely got to use the connection because his wife is always on it.
So, I needed an Internet connection, I own several of my own sites and manage several others not to mention keeping an eye on my server. First I tried getting an account with one of the 3 local dial up companies all of them offered no introductory period and wanted 3 months up front. I wasn’t going to shell out $60 to use a connection for a few weeks. Knowing that I’m using Windows and by default MSN is installed, I decided to install MSN and see if they had a local number.
MSN does have 4 local numbers and a great introductory plan; 3 months free and $21.99/mo thereafter. Great I can use the connection while I’m here and leave it on for a couple of months after I leave then cancel it with no charge. I’m using their computer so I’ll just leave everything setup for them until they can turn the cable back on.
For a couple of days all was well, MSN worked fine at a blazing fast 44 kb/s http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif I got to check my emails and websites while his wife got to spend most of the day on MySpace.
Today their computer got repoed, it was one of those rent to own deals. No biggie, I had borrowed my sister’s laptop and could just install MSN right?
Well not really.. It kept asking me for an XP disc which is retarded because on their XP computer I was able to just install MSN through add/remove programs. So, since I’m on vacation and only brought my Ubuntu discs with me, I couldn’t do anything.
Now, I’m pissed no Internet connection for the next week or so.. So, I used Windows connection wizard and signed up for people PC which kept declining my credit card so I quit trying. Then I signed up for AT&T Worldnet, which took my credit card but didn’t have a local access number. This is really frustrating.
I remember when I cleaned out the dresser I’m using here that I ran across an old AOL CD. So I dug around for it, popped it in my computer and with a little finagling got it to work with 1175 free hours. What a piece of $#!t bloatware AOL is. Off the bat it sets itself to autostart which I guess is okay if you’re going to use it all the time. Then you cannot kill it’s processes via task manager, it’s 6 separate processes by the way. All of them are marked as system owned.. Only the browser is user owned. When you finagle enough to kill the processes they automatically restart.
On top of that AOL hides your connection speed, it took me no lie 5 minutes to load the homepage of my forum (www.ourdjtalk.com (http://www.ourdjtalk.com/)). I couldn’t even load Gmail’s login page, which isn’t a large page. I decided to download MSN from the website. That took over 2 hours to download 7 megabytes.
I finally got MSN downloaded and installed but this the MSN installer was only a shell now I’m connected to MSN downloading MSN Messenger and explorer at a blazing 40 kb/s. :eek:. It’s been going about 45 minutes, probably another hour left. Then maybe I’ll be able to check my Gmail.
Dunny thing is though, I actually like MSN the suite of programs and the way it works is nice. The only thing lacking is tabbed browsing but if I ran Windows at home, I’d actually use the suite without subscribing to the service.
AOL sucks, blows big donkey balls, I don’t see how anyone could want to use that crapware. MSN is okay though it’s a dail up connection so I certainly cannot blame the speed on MSN when I’m used to a cable connection.
If you’re ever traveling and need a connection in a hurry, MSN is the way to go. http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif Now, canceling the AOL account is going to be fun. http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif http://www.bigdan.us/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif
If you like what you see buy thee a beer! (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=dan@bigdan.us¤cy_code=USD&amount=&return=&item_name=Buy+Me+a+Beer+for+MSN+&+AOL+The+Tale+of+Dial+up+connections)
More... (http://www.bigdan.us/just-me/msn-aol-the-tale-of-dial-up-connections.html)