Am considering changing my internet provider to PeoplePC.com but really don't know much about them. Does anyone out there in Indy Land have any knowledge or personal experience that they would be willing to share about this company? My biggest concern is if they have/will turn over information to the government upon request.
When I was searching for info about local providers for my brother (he lives in an Eastern state now), I stumbled upon a lot of info for nationwide providers. PeoplePC consistently got very poor reviews from users, as well as (predictably) the ones we expect such as AOL, MSN, Earthlink, and Comcast. The giant companies often have poor service, they just have too many customers and too much equipment to manage. Sometimes their service is excellent... after enough people complain, or they have had enough time to work out their system.
I would highly recommend going with a small, inexpensive local service. Not giving money to a Republican-contributing mega-company, only interested in the bottom line, would be a goal for any politically conscious person, yes? Hevanet has been fantastically reliable for me, and though they don't have 24-hour tech support (I never have cause to call them anyway except to add an email alias or make some other account change), when I do call them I get an experienced veteran Net geek rather than some kid reading scripts at me. Hevanet values privacy, I have received no SPAM whatsoever on any email alias that I didn't post to a website or use to sign up to a mail list.
I'm sure there are other great local services. I had thought that EcoSky (their offices / equipment are powered by renewable energy, mostly roof-mounted solar panels) provided I-net access, but from their website it seems their only services are website hosting:
http://www.ecosky.com/
Does anyone know of a renewable energy ISP serving Portland?
Here is a useful website ranking ISP companies:
http://www.isprank.com/Reviews.html Note that each company is ranked by users, and the reviews are arranged by "Best Ranked" and "Worst Ranked". Unsurprisingly, many of the best-ranked ones are small independent companies (arkansas.net is actually one of them!) and NetZero, PeoplePC, Juno, Netscape, and Earthlink are all in the "Worst" area.
CaptainPlanet
Thank you ever so much for your time and input. Checked out the links as you suggested and guess I will move on down the road to another yet-to-be-decided provider. When in doubt ask indy readers, they can be awesome.
I've been using nothing but small providers since the days of geeks just running servers for free and Internet Relay Chat. Look around, and you'll find them affordable, reliable. Mine has no outside advertising on their homepage or site, their online help is concise, succinct, and comprehensive, I have 50 MB of webspace with unlimited bandwidth, access from anywhere in the country (good if you're out of town and at a library) at much less than half the price of the large providers, though, like the Captain, minus 24-hour tech support beyond that on their website.
Privacy? I'm not particularly sure that applies beyond advertisers. It's pretty obvious to everyone now that government request is not even necessary, as they bypass the ISP and deal directly with the phone companies. Spam is something you control by being judicious about the sites that you visit and at the very least prompting for the acceptance of cookies and downloads.
Ah yes, speaking of phone companies ... if one does not have a long distance provider and only uses phone cards is there still information they can glean from your phone records? Do the phone companies keep data on all local calls made from individual phone numbers?
SpiritOne is a local ISP-don't know that they use renewable energy but they always kick down money to KBOO. I've had excellent luck with them and their free spam/antivirus protection is muy bueno.
yes, each individual phone numbers' calls are on some list
if you truly want your privacy back,
it's time to begin remembering and enhancing your telepathic energy
sound a bit far-fetched? not at all
from birth we are trained to forget and then as we grow
and get caught up in technology, it all becomes like
drive-thru communication
but haven't you ever experienced a time period of synchronicity in your life
where people you needed to speak with, suddenly appeared in a "chance" encounter?
we get so locked into "i can't miss a single message" that we forget to live in the Now - in other words...FLAT LINE your DIAL TONE and wake up!
I highly recommend any provider other than Peoplepc.com. The support providers are in India (hard to understand although polite.) Very slow performance (even for dialup.) And when you have had enough of Peoplepc.com be prepared for the need to change your bank account numbers, credit card numbers or whatever payment method you locked into with this crooked company. I speak from experience, having had funds stolen from my Visa account after termination of my account with Peoplepc.com. Confronting the company about illeaglly deducted charges only got me denial of account termination, the empty promise to terminate my account effective immediately, denial of anyone working for them by the name I gave them of whom my initial call of termination was with and the refusal to reimburse my Visa account for monies stolen. In addition, similar accounts from exPeoplepc.com clients can be seen on the website "Peoplepc.com."
I would highly recommend going with a small, inexpensive local service. Not giving money to a Republican-contributing mega-company, only interested in the bottom line, would be a goal for any politically conscious person, yes? Hevanet has been fantastically reliable for me, and though they don't have 24-hour tech support (I never have cause to call them anyway except to add an email alias or make some other account change), when I do call them I get an experienced veteran Net geek rather than some kid reading scripts at me. Hevanet values privacy, I have received no SPAM whatsoever on any email alias that I didn't post to a website or use to sign up to a mail list.
I'm sure there are other great local services. I had thought that EcoSky (their offices / equipment are powered by renewable energy, mostly roof-mounted solar panels) provided I-net access, but from their website it seems their only services are website hosting:
Does anyone know of a renewable energy ISP serving Portland?
Here is a useful website ranking ISP companies:
Note that each company is ranked by users, and the reviews are arranged by "Best Ranked" and "Worst Ranked". Unsurprisingly, many of the best-ranked ones are small independent companies (arkansas.net is actually one of them!) and NetZero, PeoplePC, Juno, Netscape, and Earthlink are all in the "Worst" area.
Some entertaining vitriol in these reviews about how much PeoplePC sucks ass:
Funny quote from a review website:
"Earthlink: Tech support is in the Phillipines. 'Yes then you must do quickly the dial now.'"