Topic awaiting preservation: Netscape internet service (Page 1 of 1)

Where we live I have a choice of dial-up or no internet at all. I was looking at the Netscape web site and they are offering dial-up connections for $9.95 per month. I thought, "That's better than my ISP" so I looked into it. Netscape says they offer software that will speed up your web surfing experience, virus protection, etc. The site also says that you can only sign up with them if you are using Windows.

So I called them to ask if it would be possible to sign up and use the dial-up connection without the speed up software from a Linux machine because we use a Linux gateway to access the internet and I have several Linux machines that I connect to the internet though the gateway. I assumed that the reason they said they couldn't take Mac users was that the speed up software and virus software are written for the PC.

Anyway, the customer support person I spoke to said that it is not possible to use their dial-up connection unless you are using a PC. That doesn't make sense to me. Once the packets leave my machine why would their server care whether they started on a PC, a Mac or Linus machine?

Also if I'm running a Windows machine inside my firewall, but the firewall is running on linux, shouldn't it be possible for me to download their speed up software, run it on the Windows machine and connect to Netscape through my Linux gateway?



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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

It's probably software-based and they only care about Windows. NetZero claims to offer Linux software.