Since getting my first home computer I've gone through quite a number of
service providers trying to find high quality, comprehensive service. Here's
a summary of my experiences.
Concentric Research (cris.com) - 1994
Their 'SLIP' service was actually emulated
SLIP in Unix shell accounts, and was impossibly slow. Dumped quickly.
AOL - 1994
Slow, static and lame content compared to the web, painfully slow web
browsing, and outrageous pricing. Dumped quickly.
Delta.Net - 1994 - 1997
Good, basic local provider. Service and connectivity not spectacular but
usually functional. Slow access to their machines from the wider internet.
Stockton area only. Kept it for a long time, mostly due to
inertia and to have a stable email address.
Earthlink - 1995
A company offering such an appalling lack of quality and service that I consider
them a criminal enterprise. Sadistic telephone 'support', zero bandwidth to
their web site and user pages, hangups after 10min idle time, pathetic.
Their 'online in 5 minutes' advertising was criminal. It took weeks, and
they billed my credit card 3 or 4 times for one account.
ATT WorldNet - 1996
When ATT finally offered Mac availability and sent me a CD, my Mac was
crippled within minutes of running the installation.
Software was a complete mess and destroyed my
machine's PPP connectivity, including other ISPs. Dumped instantly.
MCI - 1996
Very poor customer service in getting hooked up, did not seem to be
interested in providing quality service to individuals. Was unable to
successfully connect to their news server and noone at MCI was able
to tell me what was wrong. Dumped fast.
MSN - 1996
I tried MSN when I got my Win95 box. Reliable connectivity but very poor
ISP services: mail and news only accessible through proprietary Microsoft
software. MSN-only content was completely uninteresting (including after
the big 'NewMSN' rollout in Fall 96). Soon dumped.
IBM Global Network - 1996 - 1997
Finally an ISP to gush over. Superb connection software, flawless connectivity,
good mail and news service (though mail throughput can be a little slow). My
day-to-day ISP. Unfortunately does not offer web space, but what it does it
does very well.
10/97: Gushing is now strongly tempered by the fact that I can't
connect to their modems at any faster than 19200 from my laptop, and by the
fact they don't have a local dialup in my part of Long Island. Dumped.
Sirius.com - 1996 - 1997
Bay Area provider I use mainly for web hosting. They host personal domains
(web site and email) for a reasonable price. Dialup connectivity is not great.
Failed connections are common, as are dropped connections.
Replaced sirius.com for web hosting
when I moved from the Bay Area to Long Island.
Excellent services, prices, and customer support.
NAIS - 1997 - 1999
Local LI provider with basic services. Dropped due to mediocre
connectivity.
EZZI - 1999 - 2001
Local LI provider with basic services. Only complaint is occasionally a short disconnect
timeout. Will cable modems ever arrive in my neck of the woods?
Yes! Cable modem finally arrived. Works like a dream.
Amazon EC2 - 2008
Replaced serverbeach.com for web hosting with the Amazon EC2 cloud. Awesome. Cheap. Great combination.