NetZero Vs. AOL Dialup Service on Windows Vista

CSO the Bottom of the Barrel Internet Service Provider Challenge

This is an article detailing the real life, head bashing hassles endured by a computer layman in connecting to the Internet cheaply. If you, like me, know bupkis about these things, this article may be helpful.

I recently purchased a brand new, shiny, Windows Vista Premium equipped Gateway laptop computer from my local neighborhood Best Buy mega-store. Oddly I was sold this new buddy-in-a-box by an old high school classmate. The machine is a wondrous, intelligent device, but it is full of more quirks than Howard Hughes. The recently released Windows Vista operating system does not come with standardized programming. Instead, Bill Gates and Microsoft decided to sell different individual machines to different companies.

For instance, my brother's computer, which is also a Windows Vista equipped model, utilizes a Yahoo.com tool-bar full of fun gadgets. My system, uses a Google.com tool-bar which features entirely different gadgets. Most of the programs, like the virus software, the Internet service, and even the basic word processor, are trial period only. This eccentricity of Windows Vista would become important to my Internet experience soon.

Having blown all of my money on a state of the art, top of the line computer, I now had to figure out how to get online for dirt cheap. I had previous experience with NetZero in the long off days when they were truly free, so I had their offices mail me a disk and I signed up for their basic plan, even though my machine had been sold to AOL and was preprogrammed to link to their service.

NetZero had instant and terrible problems. When I went to log off the service, my computer froze. The NetZero application had locked and taken my Vista Premium operating system with it. In the end I had to reset my computer. I tested the glitch two more times and it proved regular. So I un-installed NetZero from my system.