Fortified with milk and cookies, I spent some time this afternoon setting up my mother’s Internet access. We are trying Copper.net, a low cost Internet provider. This provider has a three month trial period of $1/month, with a monthly fee of $10 after that. Unlike many of the low cost providers, there is no yearly contract required, nor do they push advertising. So far I am pleased: I didn’t have any trouble getting her PC to connect to the service, and when I left her email and web surfing were both working. Before I left, she walked through booting her PC and logging on to the Internet.
I used the TheOpenCD to load Mozilla on her machine to use for email and web surfing. This is the second copy I’ve burned and distributed, and I appreciate not having to download Mozilla over dialup connections.
Copper.net is the service I use when I’m in the USA, and the one I intend to sign my mother up for. I like it for several reasons: I can use any email client I want (a very important point for me), the price is right (I’m not paying for a lot of portal nonsense that I don’t want, need, or use), and they have nationwide dial-in access numbers (also very important for me). However, on my last trip (February-March this year), I discovered that I couldn’t send messages from my own domains through their SMTP server, which was a nuisance for me, but not a big drama. (I assume that’s part of their attempt to keep spammers from using their servers.) That presumably won’t be a problem for your mother.