How do I get on the Internet?

For most people, this question means

"How do I connect my home machine to the Internet?"

Answer: your get a contract with an Internet Service Provider, such as America Online, Netcom, Earthlink, ATT, Erols, Micosoft, or Yahoo. You pay them $10-30 a month, and they give you a phone number to dial in to, which can then give you access to the Internet.

But which ISP to choose?

Problem: ISP contracts involve telephone service, and we all know how anything related to telephone rates is designed to be unclear.
The bright side: phone services and ISP contracts are meant to be unclear because (a) quality difference is minimal, and (b) a highly competitive market ensures that price difference has to be minimal as well. In other words, differences between ISP's are more like Coke vs. Pepsi than Mercedes vs. Yugo.

Here are some questions on some issues that I see coming up frequently among people who take this class:

What are the prices and terms of your lowest-cost plans? (The main problem I see people having with ISPs is paying for more service than they use)
What payment plans do you accept? 1/2/3 year(s) in advance? Month-by-month? (Most plans charge different prices depending on how much $$ you'll front)
How many extra e-mail addresses do I get, and for what cost? (Some give extra addresses for free; some charge minimally; some charge seriously)
Do you include filtering software for children?
What are the terms of your technical support?
Will you set up my computer for me?

Is one provider better than others?

My impression, from reading the reviews and talking to others and from my own experience, is that the differences among providers are not huge. Basically, AOL gets a few complaints, and the other providers get none. So if you can get your price range with someone other than AOL (like Erols, or Earthlink), you'll probably be pretty happy. If you get a limited plan with AOL, you might have a busy signal now and then, but you probably won't be outraged, and you'll save a few bucks.

If you just have to have my recommendation, I'd say get AOL. You get a good amount of free time, and you can choose a $5/5hr., month-by-month account afterwards. If your bills are consistently higher than $5, you can get something else, and by then you'll know exactly what it is you want. Again, the main problem I see is people paying for more Internet service than they use.

Again, though, this is just a really quick recommendation. Other ISPs offer other strengths, opinions will vary, etc.

Hardware requirements

People ask this one a lot, too. Really you can use a huge variety of equipment on the Internet - that's the whole idea of the Internet. But these are my guesses for rough minimum and average hardware requirements for IBM compatibles:

Modem: 28.8 min, 33.6 avg.
Processor: 486-66 min, Pentium 133 avg.
RAM: 16 mb min, 32 mb avg.
Hard drive: Total size is less important than free space (both Windows and your browser use free hard disk space in tandem with RAM). Less than 100 mbs free is probably too little.

Introduction
to the
Internet