3 ms·
I used to use it when I was out of college in the 90s. There were some good reasons. I travelled for work to construction sites, and they had local dial in nu
by acomjean 8y ago
I used to use it when I was out of college in the 90s.
There were some good reasons. I travelled for work to construction sites, and they had local dial in numbers in many places. I could check email from the construction trailer. They even had a 1-800 modem line (You were very time limited, 3 hours a month or something.)
I thought it worked pretty well.
Ubiquitous Broadband killed it.
- twothamendment 8y agoI used it in the early and mid 90's. I never liked it, but every time I tried to cancel they'd give me another month or three for free. It was hard to argue with that. Now I have to have an ISP who lets me open any port I want, host what I want (within reason for a home connection) and just stays out of the way.
- analog31 8y agoThat was my experience too. My spouse and I were living in different towns, and I wanted access to my e-mail when I visited her. In return I put up with their quirky version of the Internet. My modems were too slow for any kind of Web stuff anyway. Not much later, they changed their technology so that they worked through a conventional IP address, so you could fire up AOL, go online, then open a conventional browser or e-mail program. One of the e-mail programs had a facility for fetching your AOL e-mail, so it was like you were a regular Internet user. Alternatives for reaching the Internet involved a lot of delving into settings files and setup scripts, which just didn't seem like a good use of my time. My friends who did things the "correct" way seemed to have a lot more trouble and maintenance effort. I listened to their adventures the same way I read Jerry Pournelle's "chaos manor" columns, feeling a mixture of amusement and pity.