[Ham-Computers] Re Inexpensive ISP

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Regarding the earlier situation with the gentleman with the old Aser computer
and 24 Meg of memory who wanted to connect to the Internet.	
	
Most places have some local ISP that are very good. Most are far less costly
than the big ones, and in truth, more dependable, less spam, better tech help,
less down time and far friendlier. You may lose a little speed, but it is a
small price for the other benefits.	
	
You can get limited service for $9.95, about 30 hours, and unlimited for $14.95
My ISP is the latter. Check around your area. 	
	
As Aaron correctly stated, the system memory is not an ISP issue, rather mail
client applications and so forth. Perhaps I missed it, but what OS was on this
machine? I am guessing Windows 3.1 or Windows 95a. 		
	
What about the modem speed? 28.8? 	
	
Depending on what the man desires to do with the computer, it may or may not be
worth bothering with. He can do E-Mail with the older OS and software, such as
MS Internet Mail, but handling web pages is another story. he is very apt to run
into frequent errors because of the system software not being current enough to
handle bit map and javascript, among others. 	
	
Try to find him a donated computer, there are many considered as 'obsolete' that
are perfectly good for most applications that people want to get rid of. They
may not have the latest and greatest, but they will work just fine, even if you
do have to wait a little longer for some things to load. Trying to make that
tired old horse trot may be a losing proposition. If you make a few calls and
knock on a few doors, I am pretty sure you can get him a far better machine for
free, or very close to it. In my opinion, that would be a better solution.	
	
Duane W8DBF