[VAC] Long distance to ISP?

[Terry Tyler <tylerbears@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Elisa, 

So far so good. Both of us are well and warm. Our tow cats are still as
frisky as ever. We're glad to be here and are looking forward to visiting
with family and friends.

No, it's not a long distance call. Here's how it works with Mindspring and
the dozen other ISP names that are part of the Earthlink family.

At Earthlink's support web site, there's a state by state listing of all the
local phone numbers for accessing our email. Before we left on this trip, I
down loaded the list of each state we would be visiting during the next 8
months. I filed these lists on my "desktop" as a means to simplify finding
the local number in any city where I wanted to send and receive email.

For example, when we pull into a Flying J Gas Station, I check the state
list for that town, find the number and enter it into my "Remote Access"
page (I click on that icon to display it). It will remain stored on that
page until I delete the number.  Naturally, I weed out numbers every so
often, i.e. all the numbers from last year's southwestern trip.

BUT, sometimes there is no local access number at the campground where I
want to send and receive email. In that case, I use Earthlink's 800 number.
The monthly fee is $4.95 for 60 minutes (I think).

With my new Mac iBook, I'm finding it takes about 1 minute to down load 25
emails. That's considerably faster than it was with my 10 year old Mac
laptop. I mention this because at $.08 a minute, I only do "flash sessions"
when on the 800 number.

In a nutshell, this is the story. There are other subtleties, but those are
for another day. 

Terry
mailto:tylerbears@airstream.net
11/15/01 is our first day at Encore Tampa North in Florida on site 124.  We
will be here until 12/15/01.