[blizaine]

I'm looking for a good free Internet service provider for my parents.

They were using FreeI.net, but NetZero just bought FreeI.net, and from what I can tell NetZero doesn't support the Mac yet.

I don't really care if it has banners. What I really care about is that it has POP mail instead of web-based mail.

Any recommendations?

[mkuehn]

Yeah, I was using FreeI.net, too, on my Mac. "Switch to NetZero," they said. Um, hello? There's no app for the Mac for connecting to NetZero! But hey, what can you expect for free, right?

Anyway, I had Altavista's FreeAccess internet access set up on my machine as well, so I switched over and started using that. It seems to work just fine.

But now that I read your post a little more closely, I see that you are looking for POP mail, and I don't think that Altavista's FreeAccess supports that, so in essence, this is a useless post.

Sorry 'bout that.

Maybe you can set their web-based e-mail to forward to a POP account and retrieve your mail from there? They do supply an SMTP server, so you can send mail from Outlook Express/Entourage. I'm just not sure if you can POP mail from their servers.

[mkuehn]

Originally posted by mkuehn:
I see that you are looking for POP mail, and I don't think that Altavista's FreeAccess supports that, so in essence, this is a useless post.

From http://www.microav.com/help/email.shtml :

"Free web-based email accounts are available to AltaVista Free Access users at mail.altavista.com. AltaVista Free Access does not currently offer POP-based email accounts. AltaVista Free Access will offer its own POP-based email access sometime in the near future."

Take that FWIW.

[WTWolfe]

Couldn't you set up a free internet account with anyone and then go to Apple and get you parents an "@mac.com" account then they could use Eudora or what ever they like to retrieve their email! I think that will work!

[This message has been edited by WTWolfe (edited 11-16-2000).]

[mkuehn]

Originally posted by WTWolfe:
Couldn't you set up a free internet account with anyone and then go to Apple and get you parents an "@mac.com" account then they could use Eudora or what ever they like to retrieve their email! I think that will work!

This is exactly what I do, and yes, it works great, with mac.com supplying the POP server and AltaVista supplying the SMTP server.

[This message has been edited by mkuehn (edited 11-16-2000).]

[blizaine]

Thanks for the good suggestions.

I tried this the other day and it work.

I guess I was confused as to the difference in what POP and SMTP was.

But now I know. Thanks

[bezoar]

Altavista FreeAccess works pretty well, and the ad banner is small enough to be moved out of the way. However, I have had a problem with it kicking me offline, more often than I did with AOL.

mkuehn: do you have any suggestions as to keep FreeAccess from kicking me off so often. I know some free browsers make it mandatory that you click an ad banner every so often in order to stay online, but i thought AltaVista removed this obligation. Maybe it has something to do with the call-waiting options?

[blizzard]

Uh, can someone either tell me how to access the SMTP mail server on Altavista, or point me to somewhere that can tell me how? 'Cause I been lookin' all around and I got nuthin...

I tried the obvious (smtp.altavista.com) and it didn't work, so I'm afraid I am out of ideas.

Blizz.

[MacMatt]

Blizz, when you go to http://www.altavista.com you can find a 'signup' link somewhere on the screen...pretty straight forward after that.

Matt



[This message has been edited by MacMatt (edited 11-21-2000).]

[mkuehn]

Originally posted by bezoar:
Do you have any suggestions as to keep FreeAccess from kicking me off so often.

I haven't had any problems with this. I really haven't had any problems with AltaVista's FreeAccess yet, come to think of it. I'll keep my fingers crossed on that one.

I know some free browsers make it mandatory that you click an ad banner every so often in order to stay online, but i thought AltaVista removed this obligation. Maybe it has something to do with the call-waiting options?

Yes, they removed the "health meter" in version 2.0, so you don't have to click any banners to stay on-line. It is possible that call waiting is interrupting your connection. There may be an option to turn that off when you're setting up your AltaVista connection, or maybe you can add "#70," (without quotes, and depending on your phone system) to the phone number that gets dialed to turn off call waiting while you're on-line.

[This message has been edited by mkuehn (edited 11-21-2000).]

[mkuehn]

Originally posted by blizzard:
Uh, can someone either tell me how to access the SMTP mail server on Altavista...I tried the obvious (smtp.altavista.com) and it didn't work, so I'm afraid I am out of ideas.

AltaVista's SMTP server is at email.1stup.com.

[blizzard]

Awesome...thanks a lot for your help guys, now I'm all set up. No more Hotmail for me!

Blizz.

Originally posted by blizzard:
Uh, can someone either tell me how to access the SMTP mail server on Altavista, or point me to somewhere that can tell me how? 'Cause I been lookin' all around and I got nuthin...

I tried the obvious (smtp.altavista.com) and it didn't work, so I'm afraid I am out of ideas.

Blizz.

I had a similar question when trying to set up Communicator 4.7x to send mail via AOL's smtp server when I set my dad up for mac.com email. When the obvious guesses didn't work, I sent a piece of mail normally from AOL, then read the received message header on another machine to get the name of the server - I used its numeric address. Perhaps looking at a header on mail coming from AltaVista will give you a usable server name or address. Good luck...

Camper805

[Vsx1]

I've had pretty good luck using Lycos' free ISP service. Avergage DL speeds are about 5kB/sec, spikes to 12kB/sec. My email is set up thru Netscape Messenger to my Mac.com account. I'm having trouble with sending mail back thru Messenger giving me a error message saying i cannot "bounce" a reply or something like that (I can't remember the word Messengerused). other than that I've had pretty good luck.

------------------

If you'r close to a Micro Center store, http://www.microcenter.com
they actually have Free Internet CD's that work for Mac now. It banner based and supported by NBCi I think. My girlfriend used it and it works like a charm!

http://www.emailaddresses.com/

has an (almost) complete, international listing of free e-mail, ISP's, webhosting, etc...

[bezoar]

mkuehn - i tried disabling the call waiting, with *70, but still same problem: someone calls and the connection goes bye bye. damn, guess i need DSL...


[This message has been edited by bezoar (edited 11-22-2000).]

There are a number of free internet setups available with POP e-mail support, all based on 1stup.com and provided by different organizations. I use xfiles (thexfiles.com), but the same service is provided at ubinet.com, myfavoriteeye.com and the Simpsons website.

The only catch is that you have to have a web connection to get to the software download! Or, you can call 1-877-835-6839 and ask the 1stup people how to get the software.

Many free ISPs are actually 1stup.com, including Altavista and Excite's offerings. That means they use the same dialup client and network of contracted dialup providers (large ISPs like netcom, UUnet, PSInet). The only thing that changes between different 1stup licencees is the branding (including the page it always, annoyingly, sends you to when you sign on). You will see some policy or technical changes depending on the dialup provider you're actually calling, however (the company that operates the local number you dial and the network attached to it).

You should be able to use any POP server with any free ISP for *incoming* mail. Apple's iTools "mac.com" addresses are an obvious choice for people reading this forum.

You'll have more trouble finding an SMTP server (for *outgoing* mail) with some ISPs, both because most servers will only relay for clients on their own "local" network (to prevent spam relaying), and because many of the contracted ISPs filter outgoing SMTP port traffic to prevent you reaching other people's mail servers directly. The sole reason for doing this seems to be to force you to use the free ISPs SMTP server (like email.1stup.com), which then appends a tacky ad line to the end of all your outgoing messages. You can usually work around this by figuring out which real ISP you're really connecting to by resolving the IP address your Mac receives (possibly limiting the dialup numbers list with the 1stup client) and finding out what their SMTP server is called. The usual way to do this is to do a DNS MX (Mail eXchanger) lookup for the domain name. So if you find that you're actually dialling in through netcom.com, you can do "host -t mx netcom.com" or "dig netcom.com mx" (on a Unix box, or a web page that lets you run arbitrary "dig" queries) and discover that "mail.netcom.com" is a good bet for outgoing SMTP. You can also just try host aliases like "mail", "smtp" and "email" within the domain you're dialling into until one works.

Another way to work around the outgoing SMTP issue is to use a client and server that are both capable of the POP XTND XMIT command - your mail client passes the mail to the POP server, which then passes it to its local SMTP server. Eudora and qpopper both support this option, for instance. It's worth inquiring about it from your mail administrator, since it's also extremely useful for people who roam with their machine (like me) - no having to change the SMTP server setting, ever. Unfortunately Apple's iTools accounts don't support XTND XMIT yet (perhaps the Netscape mail server they're currently using doesn't allow it).

You can also generally avail yourself of other services specific to the dialup ISP you're calling, like news servers (host alias "nntp" or "news") and NTP time servers ("ntp", "time", sometimes "tick" or "tock"). Time servers are usually open to anyone, but it's nice to use one as nearby as possible.

Hope that helps...

If you happen to be in WA, I'd highly recommend checking out nocharge.com.

To use it, you just dial 206-495-1000 (in Seattle, there are other numbers for the 'burbs), login as guest, and use password as your password.

Their whole money-making-deal is charge-per-call tech support.

I'd assume that there are similar services in other parts of the country?

[The Godfather]

Try digging those free internet application files with ResEdit. You will be pleased to discover that you can make the Ad Window "shadeable".

hint: look in the WIND resources