COMPUTER CHINCHAT
From Vince Chin
From Vince Chin |
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| A New Year and the new Millennium approaches
fast, it only seemed like yesterday that I was at school calculating how old I'd be in the
new Millennium. That was in 1976, they were teaching us binary arithmetic and it meant
absolutely nothing to us, we didn't know what a computer was let alone count in binary - a
lot has certainly changed since then. Recent Internet figures supply interesting data as to how the Net is gaining in popularity. The USA comes first with an amazing 40% of the population on the Net, that's 54 million people. In second place is Great Britain with 7.5 million, closely followed in third place by Japan 5.35 million, then Australia 3.6, Sweden 2.4, Holland 1.5, France 1.3 etc. Slowly and surely the Net is gaining interest with the masses. This interest is about to explode with the advent of free Internet Access provided by the likes of http://www.freeserve.co.uk This service hit the headlines recently when Dixons decided to supply free Internet access together with free emails and free web space. What do you have to supply in return? Nothing! I gave this new service time to settle before evaluating it and joining, attempting to get my own name as an email address - but I'll come back to that later. To join, you have to take a trip to your local Dixons and ask the kind chap behind the counter for a free Internet CD, obligingly he'll supply you with one, or maybe two in my case. I must say that I've evaluated many ISPs in my time and this installation was the easiest set-up and connection that I've ever experienced. I just couldn't believe how easy it was. I'm used to setting IP addresses together with email POP3/SMTP settings, but it handled them all - this was an extremely easy and user friendly installation, except for selecting your email account. At one point it asks you to select an account of the format: yourFirstName@yourSecondName.freeserve.co.uk |
Now how many Vincent Chin's are in the UK? Or
Colin Chin's (my brother) or Mickey Mouse's or Fred Blogg's? I even tried all my kids
names as well, it refused them all - funny that, eh! In the end I opted for flip@flops.freeserve.co.uk Whether I
keep this account is another matter, but if I don't use it within one month they state
that they'd probably close the account anyway. This service is new and hasn't been tested yet, but they do intend to have the same number of subscribers as Demon Internet, that's approximately 250,000. This will be subsidised by advertising, when you start up your Email package, OutLook Express, or Browser, Internet Explorer 4, there's a nice advert downloaded informing you of a very nice sale, and guess where! If freeserve does reach that figure of 250,000 subscribers - and I can't see why not - then the obvious question of "Can they handle it?" will arise. Have they got the required hardware? They say they have and will continue upgrading. Only time will tell but I will still keep my current account with http://www.intonet.co.uk They've served me well for over two years and it still only costs me £10 a month. But for anyone thinking of joining the Net, or like me, getting another free connection, I certainly suggest you join http://www.freeserve.co.uk but hurry because you'll probably end up with droopy@draws.freeserve.co.uk Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year See you next month…Vince Chin |
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