Vol. 2, No. 11 -- Week of March 19, 2000

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Welcome to Learn the Net News.

The online world parallels the real world in startling ways. While cyberspace can be an exciting electronic playground, it can also be a dangerous place, particularly for kids. If you have children or grandkids, it's vital that they understand how to stay out of harm's way. This week, we give you some pointers and suggest how to educate your kids about online safety.

Despite the booming economy in many countries, some people take great pleasure in living inexpensively. Their rallying cry is "Live Better for Less." Can it be done? Discover some of the ingenious ways to save your hard-earned money by taking our Frugal Web Tour.

We've been getting terrific response from our privacy article. If you haven't yet read how to keep your personal information private, what are you waiting for? Click on to the site---we promise not to tell anyone you were there!

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"Top Ten Things You Can Do on the Net This Week" includes:

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You've probably heard about DSL, short for Digital Subscriber Line, which promises Internet access at speeds up to 50 times faster than your modem. Phone companies across the U.S. have been pushing this new technology big time lately. I decided to get DSL service for my home office, despite the horror stories I've heard about installation problems and service outages. I signed up with Pacific Bell Internet, which offers DSL for $40 a month.

After waiting a month for an appointment, the technician arrived last Monday to install the service. It took about three hours to get everything up and running, When I sat down at my computer for a test drive, my first observation was that my access speed was far from blazing. Now in all fairness, the speed of your connection is only one factor--others include the amount of traffic on the network and the speed of the server that delivers the web pages. It was still an improvement over the 56 Kb modem.

The next day, the connection went down. I haven't been able to get online again over the DSL line. Fortunately, I kept my dial-up account (Lesson 1), so I've been using that until the problem is resolved. I spent three hours on the phone with Pacific Bell tech support (half the time I was on hold listening to elevator music). The prognosis? The network card the technician installed in my computer may be defective. With great apologies, PacBell promised to have a technician install a new one on Saturday afternoon. Guess what? No one should up! When will I get a new one? Your guess is as good as mine. I'll keep you posted in my next installment of the DSL Diary.

My final word of advice--if Net access is critical to you, don't dump the "old" technology until the new one works flawlessly.

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Michael Lerner

Publisher

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