[gaby38]

Hello all,

I'm looking to upgrade from basic NetZero to the High Speed version. (I know, I know ... still in dial-up era!)

Wonder if any of you use this ISP, did the upgrade, and have any comments about it. Does it really improve speed connection? Is it stable enough?

Thanks

Here's PC Magazines review of NetZero High Speed and EarthLink Plus, hope this helps (Here's the link to the actual article): High-Speed Dial-Up: Does It Work?
By John R. Delaney
June 17, 2003

Total posts: 1



Product: EarthLink Plus
Price: $28.95 per month
Company Info: EarthLink Inc., 800-395-8425, www.earthlink.com
Editor Rating:


Product: NetZero HiSpeed
Price: $14.95 per month
Company Info: NetZero Inc., 877-638-9376, www.netzero.com
Editor Rating:
Rate it Yourself






You've no doubt seen the ads: Broadband speed from regular dial-up ISP service. This seems like an ideal solution for users who still don't have access to cable modem or DSL service or for casual Web users who can't justify the $40 (or more) monthly bill for broadband. But does it work?

We signed up with two of the largest ISPs currently offering these so-called "premium" dial-up services: EarthLink Plus ($28.95 per month) and NetZero HiSpeed ($14.95 per month).


First and foremost, let us point out that neither service actually speeds up your 56K connection, nor do they speed up music, streaming video, or executable file downloads. Instead, they use a combination of caching and compression technologies to speed the delivery of typical Web pages to your PC.

EarthLink Plus uses a solution engineered by Propel Software Corp. to compress certain page elements, such as text and graphics, shrinking the data sets so they arrive at your location faster. NetZero HiSpeed is based on SlipStream Data's solution, which also compresses certain page elements.

Both services let you choose varying levels of optimization, which affects the quality of the graphics on a page. If you choose the highest speed (and hence the greatest compression), the image quality is downright poor. On PCMag .com, for example, the photo accompanying John C. Dvorak's column became a featureless blob. But you can right-click on an image to restore it to its original resolution—after the requisite dial-up delay, of course.

In addition to compression, EarthLink Plus and NetZero HiSpeed employ proprietary caching technologies that enable fast access to frequently visited sites. Essentially, the accelerator mechanism saves certain elements of previously loaded pages and has to process only the updated elements rather than retrieving the entire page. In our informal testing, we noticed faster load times of the PCMag.com home page after subsequent visits. The more you visit the same sites, the faster those pages will load.

NetZero HiSpeed can be installed from a CD (which you can order by mail, phone, or the Web) or by downloading the software. The online installation was painless, and after filling in our area code and dialing preferences in the NetZero applet, we were set up and ready to go within 3 minutes.

Although we had a choice of more than a dozen local access numbers for our area, several of them repeatedly dropped the connection during our testing. We finally found at least one number that provided a continuous connection.

NetZero allows you to switch between regular and HiSpeed mode using a settings box that resides in the Windows system tray. Each time you connect to NetZero, you're subjected to a video advertisement called NZTV, which runs in a little TV-style window while you're waiting to connect. And you get only one e-mail address per subscription; in most households, this could be a problem.

Click here
to view the results.
We ran our i-Bench 4.0 benchmark tests in NetZero's normal mode as well as in two accelerated modes. The HTML load test initially took 4 minutes 9 seconds to complete in normal mode. In NetZero's maximum acceleration mode, the pages loaded in 1:09; in NetZero's minimal acceleration mode, they loaded in 1:50.

We saw similar trends in our informal testing when loading the PCMag.com home page. That page took slightly more than 1 minute to load in normal mode. In NetZero's maximum acceleration mode, the page loaded in 26 seconds.

Although EarthLink Plus is more expensive than NetZero HiSpeed, you get a lot of bang for your buck, including eight individual e-mail addresses and 10MB storage space per address for building your own customized Web pages. EarthLink even provides a free online Click-n-Build feature to help you get your page up and running, and its priority technical-support program guarantees that you'll be connected to a live phone representative within 5 minutes (we tried it three times and weren't disappointed).

The EarthLink Plus control applet gives you the option to set aside between 20MB and 2GB of hard drive space on your PC to store cached files. You can delete your cached pages to free up space, although this will slow down acceleration.

Setting up our account was easy. When we ran i-Bench 4.0 before downloading the acceleration software, the HTML load test took 3:37 to complete. In EarthLink Plus's maximum acceleration mode, the pages loaded in 26 seconds; in minimal acceleration mode, they took 35 seconds. In normal mode, the PCMag.com page loaded in 50 seconds but needed only 20 seconds with maximum acceleration.

Both EarthLink Plus and NetZero HiSpeed will bring more speed to Web surfers who rely on dial-up connectivity. NetZero HiSpeed is a good deal for the money, especially for those who really don't need extra features like additional e-mail accounts and personal Web pages. For a family of two or more, EarthLink Plus may make more sense. Either one will help you squeeze the most out of your phone line.

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To me neither sound great. If you're looking for good high speed browsing go with SBC Yahoo! DSL.

Here's a review of SBC Yahoo! DSL (which I recommend you get, I have it):* SBC Yahoo! DSL
By Winn L. Rosch
September 16, 2003

Total posts: 1



Service: SBC Yahoo! DSL
Price: Basic account, $29.95 per month; full-speed account, $39.95
Company Info: Yahoo! Inc. and SBC Internet Services. http://sbc.yahoo.com
Readers' Rating: D+







SBC Yahoo! aims to be a major player, with aggressive pricing for basic DSL accounts (up to 384 Kbps for downloads and 128 Kbps upstream). But better-than-average reader satisfaction for rates is not enough; the service racks up four worse-than-average scores—for technical support, connection speed, e-mail service, and likelihood to recommend.

All necessary gear (including a network interface card) comes free with a one-year commitment. SBC Yahoo! supplies its own browser, messenger, and parental-control software. It also provides 11 e-mail accounts, with an impressive 25MB of storage space for the main mailbox and 10MB for each of the others—the most any service offers. Still, SBC Yahoo! gets a worse-than-average score for satisfaction with e-mail service.


SBC Yahoo! actually solicited our testing household, with two representatives calling in one month. When we finally said "go," SBC Yahoo! treated us to an automated thank-you call the next day and the installation package one day after that.

SBC Yahoo! supplies an auto-run CD with instructions to install the DSL line filter, connect the terminal adapter to the line and computer, and begin. The one bit of trouble—a modem light that wouldn't light—was solved by the on-disc troubleshooter. After more than half an hour of software installation (and 125MB of hard drive space), the program let us choose a user name and password, and we were online. Transmission speed was disappointing—about 152 Kbps downstream.

One downside: You must install the SBC Yahoo! browser software to get started (once you're online, your old browser and e-mail still work). Uninstalling the SBC Yahoo! software is a step-by-step nightmare. Tech support was fast, friendly, and wrong. The rep tried to be helpful, but his depth of training (or authority) was thin and he had to make referrals for simple issues.

One big annoyance: Just 5 minutes after the first log-on, the first pop-up instant-message ad appeared—advertising a pop-up blocker. After we ditched all the SBC Yahoo! software, we found the service much more satisfactory.

*Here's the link to the actual article.

[gaby38]

Great info !!. Thank you very much for your response, it has been quite helpful.

By gaby38: Great info !!. Thank you very much for your response, it has been quite helpful.

Sure thing! I'm happy to help you!

[Paul Nagel]

I am still using dialup and a local company in the Ann Arbor area recently started providing Turbo Connect by Slipstream. It is about the same as Netzero's High Speed. The big difference is i pay $9.95 per month and the ISP provides the extra service for free. The program simply encrypts at the ISP's server and decriypts at your computer the images associated with web pages. Turbo Connect has options to set the degree of loss you get with the encrypt/decrypt working. When i leave it set as default, about 2/3 of the way up the scale, pages like Fark.com which usually take 2-4 seconds to open, will open is about 1-2 seconds due to the many images. The images are OK looking. If i set it to fastest load time, the images almost look cartoonish due to the lost data from the process. If i want to look at or download a picture, i turn it off. I recently downloaded the Hubble telescope picture of Mars at its closest pass to earth both ways and quickly deleted the Turbo Connect version due to poor quality.
My opinion: It works somewhat but not worth $5.00 per month that Netzero is asking. If you can take a couple of seconds extra to open a page, save your money. I you dont care about the images and only care about the text, it may make page opening a little faster.

[gaby38]

Thank you very much for your response.

Let me start by saying that I decided to give it a try about a week ago.

The thing DOES work in general. It speeds up not your connection itself, but the downloading of pages utilizing the method that you describe, with the correspondent sacrifice in picture resolution. NetZero also carries the feature that allows you to regulate the level of image distortion, and besides, once the page is completely downloaded, you can select the picture (or pictures) you want to be displayed at normal resolution by right-clicking on it.

I had some compatibility issues with my firewall (NIS 2003) in the beginning, but after I made some adjustments to it they both seem to be getting along well now.

So, yes, the difference it’s not immense, but coming from plain dial-up, those 2 or 3 seconds less when browsing from site to site are quite significant for me!

[Paul Nagel]

I am glad you are happy with it. I have had some issues with it but it is related to the local company most likely. Sometimes when it first starts up, it will not "find" the Turbo Connect server and i cant get online. One or two more attempts to start TC will always work. I talked to one of their techs and was told they are going to upgrade the TC server soon and that will stop happening. I guess i am fickle or something as i have installed/uninstalled it 3 times now and currently dont have it on the computer. I use ZoneAlarm for my firewall and the only issue there was to allow TC access to the outside world.

[bellgamin]

I tried NetZero Hi Speed for a while. As I remember, they require use of their own browser, which I detested.