Getting to the Internet
There
are many different access plans and methods to connect a Personal
Computer to the Internet. The services are provided by
Internet Service Providers, ISPs, and vary widely in price and
function.
The
most common service is "POTS," or plain old telephone
service, although satellite and cable modems are on the horizon.
The horizon is Tampa, Orlando and Miami,
where services, such as the Road Runner cable modem, are in full
swing.
Charlotte
County may be allowed to join the high speed revolution as the trunks
and backbones are extended down Florida's southwest coast. Even
"POTS" may have a breath of life as Digital Subscriber
Lines are to be activated in the future. One of my Bell South friends
in Miami has been using DSL at his home for several months now. He
has become addicted to high speed access. He is a music lover,
downloading the new MP3 format quickly and without errors. To those
loading big files, DSL is a major breakthrough in speed, even though
the cost is over twice the rate for normal ISP service.
To the advertising and print media, the high speed transmissions mean huge, formerly cumbersome graphics files, such as photographs, now take only a matter of seconds or minutes instead of hours to send or receive.
But we
are in Charlotte County, where I'm asked on a regular basis, "How
can I get on AOL from Punta Gorda without paying long distance access
charges?" Many AOL members in Punta Gorda complain about lack of
access. There is a way to use your AOL account, and it is
cheaper than long distance calling to an AOL access number. AOL
calls it "bring your own access."
Even
though the E-mail address I use for my column is "georgecsm@aol.com,"
my Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not AOL. My ISP is a service by
an organization I was formerly involved with at $15.95 a month, a
reduced rate from their normal $19.95 package. I piggyback my AOL
service as a "bring your own access" customer at a
reduced AOL price of $9.95 a month. I use TCP/IP to connect to AOL.
There
are several ISPs in the Punta Gorda area where the local access call
is toll-free. The soon-to-be released AOL 6.0 promises to make AOL
mail look and act like everyone else. AOL, by the way, is a "proxy"
server, and having your mail waiting for you, no matter how many
unread messages are waiting when you log on, is kind of nice.
The
Internet has come a long way in just a few short years. I was an
original Prodigy subscriber in the 1980s and had to buy an Enhanced
Graphics Display and adapter and a 300 baud modem for my PC/XT.
As Dean Martin used to
say, "keep those cards and letters coming in, friends!"
George Mindling
©
2000
