In computer news this week, 02/29/2000

One of the things I hate about watching television is getting hit with all the ads. I realize I'm paying my cable company to get a variety of channels, but I know I am also paying to be delivered to thousands of advertisers and to be bombarded with annoying ads. Worse yet, my cable company is probably making additional money off my subscription by claiming to advertisers that I and millions of other cable subscribers will watch their ads.

The internet works same way. On the largest service, AOL, you pay a monthly rate for bad slow service and you are constantly bombarded with ads, from AOL itself hawking its latest wares, and by other advertisers who pay AOL for the right to advertise directly to you.

Now we see the emergence of supposedly totally free internet services, operating under the theory that these services will deliver you to the advertisers for free; you don't have to pay for the service and you don't have to buy from the advertisers.

This is a different category from the companies giving out supposedly free pc's with internet services, where you have to agree to buy so much per month or over a period.

Juno.com is one service offering supposedly free internet access, so I decided to give it a try.

You go to Juno.com and click on their icon for downloading their free internet software. This is a file about 5 megs in size, meaning it will take you awhile to download it.

Then you run this install program, and it goes through many screens setting up both your email and web browsing account. You select your own screen name and password during this process, and local access numbers for our area. Then you are asked to fill out several screens of your personal information, who you are, what you like, how you spend your free time, hobbies, interests, income, all information potential advertisers want to know.

After doing this, you get connected to the Juno mail section, and here you can create an address book of email names. Juno appears to use its own proprietary mail system.

When you start it up from the Juno icon it creates on your desktop, you're given the choice of internet mail or web access. The mail choice connects you to Juno mail, or tries to connect - it has worked about 75% of the time for me dialing a local number. Then your mail is downloaded, and you can send new mail

The web surfing choice is the other selection, and this has worked most of the time. It brings up netscape, so if you have been using netscape, all your bookmarks and favorite places are right there.

The downside of this free service is that it puts a 1 by 8 inch advertising banner on your screen, which also includes a navigation menu. You can move this banner around your screen, but not off. You can choose to ignore it also, but it flashes in color and has animation and tends to catch your eye. It also stays onscreen if you switch into other programs. The other gimmick they do is put a full screen ad onscreen , and then you have to look for the tiny "close" button on it to move forward. Sneaky. They move the "close" button all over the ad screen so you have to find it each time.

Other downsides include no personal web page space, and you share a common access number with thousands of other people, just like the other services.

So is this a free lunch? It's free, but it's not a full lunch. I wouldn't use this for business in lieu of another service, because of its limitations, but I will keep this account as an alternative service I might need to use in an emergency.

However, for home or casual internet use, this could be just what you're looking for, and it really is free.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

(C) 1999 MTA Micro Technology Associates

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