Cut-Rate Surfing - get internet for free - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, May, 2001 by Erin Burt

TECHNOLOGY You may be PAYING TOO MUCH for online. Here's an alternative.

IF YOU SPEND fewer than 18 hours a month online and your Internet service provider charges you more than $10 a month, you're a good candidate for prepaid Internet service. Similar to a prepaid phone card, prepaid Internet service charges you only for the time you are connected to the Web. In addition, you're not locked into using your service on any one computer, and you can add more minutes when you run out.

Prepaid Internet service can also be a good deal for travelers, people learning to use the Internet, families who want to limit time spent online, or as a backup if your regular ISP goes down. It costs just pennies per minute, and you're not required to register personal information such as your name, phone number, address or credit card number. Furthermore, you get free e-mail, and you're spared pop-up ads and extra banner ads.

With the Interpass card or CD-ROM (877-349-2035; www.interpasscard .net), $20 will buy you 35 hours of local Internet access --about a penny per minute. Interpass works through the dial-up software included with your modem. It's compatible with PCs, Macs, Web-ready PDAs and cell phones, but not DSL. To purchase an account or find a retailer that sells the service, call Interpass or check its Web site.

For less than 2 cents a minute, you can surf the Web with the Slingshot CD-ROM (www.slingshot .com), available at CompUSA, Costco, Service Merchandise and Staples. For $10, you get ten hours of local online access. That's not as good a deal as Interpass, but if you'll need nationwide toll-free access, Slingshot's 8 cents per minute is considerably lower than Interpass's toll-free rate of 14 cents per minute. Slingshot isn't Macintoshcompatible, but will soon be available for Web-ready cell phones and PDAs.