Well, at my house we still have the original AOL account my wife opened a few years ago. I refused to use AOL because they have so much proprietary crap and advertising -- I wanted an "invisible" ISP, where I just launch my browser and never have to see their cutesy little interface. My first try was EarthLink. Only complaint is that every 2-3 minutes, the server went into a 30-45 second "stall". I assume this is how ISPs handle a serious oversubscription problem -- if you make every subscriber wait 30 or so seconds every 3 minutes, you can appreciably increase your capacity without actually spending any money. So, I switched to MSN. Exact same thing -- for all I know, I'm actually addressing the same "outsourced" server. Anyways, I can tolerate MSN -- during the "up" time, it's nice and fast, and I feel like it's just me and the Web, without AOL's proprietary graphics and ads. But, I must admit, even though my wife has an EarthLink account, she won't give up AOL -- her work requires reliable Web access, and AOL never seems to go into those "stalls". Actually, EarthLink and MSN have performed so similarly, that I was going to ask any computer gurus in the crowd if there might be something INTERNAL to my computer and software that is causing the "stalls". Just wondering...

James, in Bristol, RI