arethinn: glowing green spiral (Default)
Cute. MetroFi has apparently decided that to connect you now must download and install an "MSN SideGuide", which from the tiny pictures I assume is where they want to place the ads (and take up sizable screen real-estate to do it, I might add; it seems bigger than the banner across the top was). I guess they got wise that people were blocking their JavaScript-inserted ones. Heaven only knows what tracking they would be doing with it. Also, XP SP2 and Vista only, so sorry, Dad, with your Win98 machine.

Yeah, well, you doods can forget that.

Ugh. The lack of broadband here is getting stupid. Sharing a dial-up account between three people is just not on (I know from experience). I know my internet appetites are stupidly huge, but my mother's and father's have grown as well, especially since my dad is trying to give up the newspaper (which he derides, rightly, as being mostly crap and advertising these days) by getting news online. I was so happy when we finally got MetroFi working over a year ago. Now we're pretty much down to satellite and that's only if we decide to get satellite TV, which is the kind of decision the wheels turn very slowly on in this household.

*sigh* I guess maybe we should buy a second dial-up account. Then at least two of us could be online at once, since we have two phone lines. Wow! $40 a month (between them) for 56k! That sounds so reasonable in this day and age!

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:24 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] heartssdesire.livejournal.com
Heh. I sympathize. Out here there is only one broadband option, a guy who put up a wireless tower on somebody's property on the next ridge. Otherwise it's dial-up or satellite. The wireless guy is notoriously hard to get ahold of, and it costs several hundred to install the receiver thingy we have to have to get the signal, but we are finally going to get it because we cannot stand dial-up any more. On rural phone lines, it is just getting intolerable. Lots of stuff just fails to load at all.

How come you have to get satellite TV in order to get satellite internet? There are providers who just do internet. Is it just that the family doesn't think it's worth the money on its own? It does seem kind of spendy, which is why we hadn't gone that way ourselves. My dad uses satellite for internet on his RV, but then on an RV it's pretty much the only option, so maybe he just bit the bullet.

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:54 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] starlightforest.livejournal.com
How come you have to get satellite TV in order to get satellite internet?

Cost-prohibitive. They're always packaged together. To go with a different provider for each is silly. Mind that my parents are living off Social Security and pathetic interest income at this point.

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:49 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] shalora.livejournal.com
Maybe switch ISPs? I run PeoplePC, which gives me access to 56K for 11 bucks a month... even doubled, that's just over half of what you're anticipating paying.

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:53 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] starlightforest.livejournal.com
1. Laziness. Reeeallly don't want to go through the researching of a whole new ISP. Better the devil we know.

2. We could get the second one from them, but can't completely switch. My mother is way too invested in her current email address (she's had it for something like 7 years).

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:56 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] helen99.livejournal.com
ext_5300: tree in the stars (Default)
Effective Feb. 27, 2008, MetroFi is removing the ad banner that sponsors free broadband Internet service in Sunnyvale, and officially joining MetroFi-Free with MSN SideGuide.

Way to ruin a good service - join forces with MSN. MetroFi should be beaten senseless with a pot noodle.
Edited Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:56 pm (UTC)

Date: Feb. 27th, 2008 08:59 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] starlightforest.livejournal.com
Yeah, thanks, I noticed it when I tried to connect this morning and got served a different page than last night at 2 AM. :P

I like pot noodles. (Actually, I've never had a real British one. Maybe I wouldn't.)

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