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Published on 01/22/1996 All articles from this issue

Choosing an Internet Service Provider

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If you've made the decision to take a ride on the Internet, you're going to have to choose an "on-ramp". There are different ways to get on the Internet, whether it's by joining a national online service, such as Prodigy, CompuServe or America Online, or through a local service provider, like WombatNet or Hooked.

The national online services allow you to access their databases, which let you read major magazines, download files to your computer (programs, sounds, screen savers), and even "chat" with other members from around the country. Each online service caters to a different type of user. America Online and Prodigy cater to a large audience, ranging in ages and professions, while CompuServe offers more to the business executive.

The national online services are fairly new to the Internet and their browser applications (programs used to navigate and view home pages) often aren't as sophisticated as Netscape, the industry standard. Local service providers allow you to use the browser of your choice.

Local providers may not have as many modems and phone lines as the national providers. Your local provider might give you two phone numbers to dial in with your modem, while the national providers will have several to choose from in your area.

While they have their differences, it comes down to your needs. The casual user who likes having more than just Internet access, will probably want a national provider, while the avid Internet user will choose a local provider.

Los Altos Online can be found at the URL address http://www.baynet.com/latc

Internet definition of the week: HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. A series of tags in a document that indicate how that document should be presented when viewed by a browser application, like Netscape. Home Pages on the Internet are written in HTML. HTML is an offspring of GML (General Markup Language), originated by IBM in the late sixties as an attempt to solve some of the problems of transporting documents across different computer systems.

-James McComb

Comments or suggestions? You can reach me at 948-9000 ext.325 or through e-mail at james@towncrie.batnet.com