dial-up | Blog about business and product management

Did we just descended to 1997 just because of credit crisis? Just now I saw a Netzero commercial, featuring CEO Mark Goldston, promoting dial-up connection. Yep, you read this right – a Netzero (definitely a name from 90s) is promoting a dial-up, claiming “it takes you to the same Internet as broadband”, just does it cheaper. Now, I don’t know about the average Joe’s needs on the internet (maybe all he does is checks his e-mail using that good old Lynx browser.

But if he’s anything close to average Joe I know he checks his e-mail using webmail interface which is pretty heavy load on my scale – wheather you’re using Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail or your provider’s web mail interface. Then he checks the weather. Just as an example – the weather.com’s total weight is over 100KB. Then maybe he reads some news (NYTimes.com – 322KB, CNN.com – 663KB). Now the scary part starts – his girlfriend, or wife, or daughter wants to do some shopping online. Zappos.com is 106KB, Macy’s is 335KB and SaksFifthAvenue (in case they’ve got money to spend) is 236KB. And don’t even think of watching any video – YouTube or Hulu.

So, maybe someone out there knows what’s Netzero counts on. From my point of view – this is just a bad waste of good money. Might have donated to charity, that ought to work out better.

The End Of The Telephone Line - Small Business, Marketing and Web Design Blog Yesterday I canceled two last services that were reminding me of the era of old computers, modems, connection problems and other geeky fun that I was having. The Plain-Old Telephone Service (POTS) is not functioning in my Brooklyn apartment anymore, cell phone is more then enough.

Alternatively, I can always use Skype and Gizmo – call quality is almost the same, if not better. Since I signed up with OptimunOnline’s Boost service I get a bit better speed, open ports 25 and 80 (for e-mail and HTTP services). Aside from annoying calls at 8 in the Saturday morning from some collection agency who’s hunting people who used to own my phone number a year ago the cost of having an old-style phone line is just the same as a decent DSL line. Latter, however, is capable of much more then just voice transmission.

The whole process took me less then 7 minutes. This is including dragging through automatic menu and paying the balance online. Verizon really does a good service at canceling a service, unlike some other companies who really resist your quitting, like Netfirms or Earthlink.