cheaper dialup

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The One Percent

cheaper dialup

Post by The One Percent »

Hi Ted i wanted tell you, you can get Cheaper Internet Service From http://www.torchlake.com Server's.

I use them on a 56K Moden i get a High Bps Rate also i Hardley ever get Booted offline very Rare.

its $17.00 a Month i Pay. I had GtLakes wasent happy with them..Ok Cya ;}
Jeff
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Post by Jeff »

Have you figured out how to not pay long distance?

Since GLE is the only local dialup on Beaver Island, I don't see how dialing to tourchlake.com would be even close in price, unless you make a lot of long distance calls to pay for one of the unlimited plans I've seen advertised lately (wasn't sure if there were other strings attached to those) - is that what you're trying?

(P.S. and GLE is at $16.95 a month now for standard)
The One Percent

Hmm True..

Post by The One Percent »

Hi jeff yes i forgot about your Long distance charge's for being on the Island. So its a 237 # my modem Dials they have a Main frame/ Router at the Charlevoix Library i was Told that get's my Local Dial up Connection to TorchLake Server.

Im not sure if it will help Islander's or Not.
Jeff
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Post by Jeff »

Yes, long distance charges were always the major hurdle to Internet access on Beaver Island and a main reason BIIP was created. The summer before that I alone for example managed to ring up a thousand dollars in long distance charges connecting to an off-Island ISP â?? quite expensive to say the least. So BIIP was fantastic for the Island by creating the first local access. Now that GLE has taken over, Iâ??m not aware of many people complaining about the quality of service - at least I havenâ??t heard any complaints and although I mostly use Starband right now, when I do use BIIP for shell or ftp, I havenâ??t gotten a single busy signal since GLE came to town, and only a few drops â?? Iâ??ve been quite pleased with the level of service.

While weâ??re on the topic, how close are you to getting broadband access where you are? On the Island GLE introduced line-of-sight wireless which would be a world ahead of dialup or satellite, but only for a very few customers who have a line of sight with the schoolâ??s small roof-mounted antenna. There was talk a while back of Wireless First lighting up the cable and/or installing a more ambitious tower based and NLOS wireless setup, but their plans fizzled and they seemed to lose interest before getting started â?? Iâ??m not sure if they overestimated the capabilities of their NLOS system in a relatively flat wooded area like the Island without enough pre-existing towers or if the Islandâ??s â??easyâ?￾ market simply wasnâ??t big enough for them once GLE provided stable dialup at reasonable costs. But hopefully in the next few years technology and demand will combine to offer more customers access to higher speed always-on Internet on the Island.
Nich
Posts: 155
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2003 5:34 am

Thanks for the info.

Post by Nich »

Hello:
Thanks for the info! As Jeff mentioned, long-distance charges are to be considered for us "islanders." But I appreciate the info, keep it coming.
I've had very good service through GLE so far. Especially since they forgot to bill me for the first year. :-) Ah, well... they'll catch up with me on the next billing cycle.
Ted
Ted Nicholas
nich01@tds.net
BobTidmore
Posts: 757
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2003 3:00 pm
Location: Beaver Island

High speed dial up access

Post by BobTidmore »

For whatâ??s it worth todayâ??s Wall Street Journal (January 21, 2004) has an article on page 4 of Section D about software that improves you ability to quickly load web sites. According to their tests the â??NetZero HiSpeedâ?￾ dial up service can provide you with, to quote the author, â??the feeling you get with a midrange broadband systemâ?￾. The author documented download speeds of 350 kilobits per second. It is actually not that fast as they go on to explain the software compresses and caches data to make it seem that fast.
Iâ??ve used the Great Lakes service on and off the island and the only problem I have is that my e-mail inbox is purged on a regular basis without my knowledge.
Bob Tidmore
Rich

Purging

Post by Rich »

Well, you know Bob, purging is a natural thing :lol: , now don't be complaining!! :D
Nich
Posts: 155
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2003 5:34 am

Purging email InBox

Post by Nich »

Hello,
Depending on your email software, you should be able to set it to download the email from the server, each time you check it. I'm not sure how you have it set right now, but it sounds like your email software is leaving your email ON the server. Thus, every once in a while the server does a what it calls a "garbage run" to clean itself up.
Look around in your email settings for an option that lets you download all email from the server. This option actually moves your email from the server to your computer system, and deletes it from the server, every time you check your email. It would save all your email in your "out box." You could delete the ones you no longer want and retain the ones you do. They would already be removed from the GL server.
That way you won't have email disappearing on you.
Ted
Ted Nicholas
nich01@tds.net
Jeff
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Post by Jeff »

Unless Bob wants to use the same email account from multiple locations or from 'away from home' computers while on vacation, leaving the mail on the server until he can retrieve it to a main computer when he gets back....

I can't blame GLE for having a limit and not wanting to accumulate hundreds of megabytes of email for each user, especially with the volume of spam mailboxes can quickly accumulate. But I am surprised they don't make the limit for when email will be purged, either in MB or time, clear to their users.
Jeff
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2002 9:31 pm
Location: Beaver Island
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Post by Jeff »

Re: Netzero HighSpeed and the idea of proxy compression, here is a review of a similar product I ran across:
http://dansdata.com/propel.htm
At least the image re-compression examples are worth seeing. I'm an image-oriented person so it probably wouldn't be for me (except for its html compression maybe) but for others who are text-oriented it would probably be ok.

It's nothing new - but it might be the right mix. AOL for example has been doing recompression for years and years, but most AOL users don't even know how to toggle it on and off. An option to vary the level of re-compression with ease depending on whether you are researching text or viewing a photography site is a definite plus and something that would be difficult to achieve without the proxy in the middle (as more and more people get broadband but some are still left behind on dialup, how do you decide what quality to make the images - for which audience do you optimize the site? I don't think many are willing to spend the additional time and resources to provide or generate multiple versions on the web server, so if proxies in the middle work well, it could be a great solution.) Likewise, utilizing a predictive precache is nothing new, but most don't use them. All browsers cache elements as you browse obviously, but if they can make more aggressive caching for longer durations work well and not have problems with showing outdated content or that kind of thing, or DOS'ing servers like offline browsers sometimes do, more power to them.

The one thing I do not like is how they are intentionally misleading in their claims and seem in their TV ads to talk down to everyone except those who use "dude" quite frequently; I think the consensus is that it's certainly not real broadband or equivalent, and probably not as good as ISDN, but at the same time it's better than nothing for dialup users and not that expensive.
Guest

Great Lakes Internet Service-Inbox

Post by Guest »

Iâ??ve talked to them about the purging of my inbox and the technical support folks didnâ??t know why, especially as my â??sent messagesâ?￾ have been there since last November. I solved it by having any message sent there forwarded to my hotmail account. Thatâ??s a nice feature they have.
P.S. to Jeffâ??I sent you a couple of private e-mails but never received a reply. Did you get them?

Bob Tidmore
Nich
Posts: 155
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2003 5:34 am

Hotmail accounts

Post by Nich »

Hello,
Hotmail accounts, or yahoo, or something similar are the way to go for checking email while travelling. Otherwise you'd have to call long-distance to hook up to the local service here, in order to check your email. With a hotmail account, you simply need internet access. You can check your email from a friends computer, or an internet cafe.
But, look into hotmail's mailbox limit. They used to have a 4 megabyte limit, if your mailbox fills up any more than that you may have to clean it up yourself occasionally. They may have raised the limit since the last time I used them. It should say something about it in the user-reference info.
Ted Nicholas
nich01@tds.net
Jeff
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Post by Jeff »

Otherwise you'd have to call long-distance to hook up to the local service here
GLE does list webmail as a feature at https://www.gtlakes.com/webmail/ for GLE/BIIP customers who want to check their POP accounts away from home. I don't use webmail so I'm not sure if it's lacking features, but at least it's an option...
BobTidmore
Posts: 757
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2003 3:00 pm
Location: Beaver Island

Great Lakes Service

Post by BobTidmore »

The Great Lakes service is avaliable as a dial up nationwide. That's the big reason I signed up. I guess the headquarters is in Florida or at least that's where the tech support is. As I have said I like their service and it is a fast as the ATT service I formely used.
Bob Tidmore
Jeff
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2002 9:31 pm
Location: Beaver Island
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Post by Jeff »

P.S. to Jeffâ??I sent you a couple of private e-mails but never received a reply
I'm sorry Bob - I'm afraid I flagged your email to write a somewhat lengthly reply as soon as I had time... and despite the cold weather the last couple of weeks have flown by. I promise I'll try and catch up on my email soon :oops:

--I think I'll install and get comfortable with FreeBSD today... is what I said last Monday...
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