Resources for the Washington DC area

Review of EarthLink Internet Service

I've used EarthLink's dialup access for a while and found it to be pretty good overall.

Being a bit of a techie, I like it because it's very generic and will work on weirdo operating systems like Linux. Their aren't too many of the major ISP's that are set up to easily work with Linux. You can also set up your connection manually be creating a dialup networking connection and it works fine. If you've ever heard nightmare stories of ISP software messing up somebody's computer, being able to set things up manually is a nice option.

EarthLink has plenty of connection phone numbers. And the connections are very reliable. Compared to PeoplePC, I've found EarthLink is better. You pay considerably more for EarthLink, but if you need the very most reliable connection you can get, EarthLink seems about as good as you're going to find.

Also, EarthLink's tech support is very good. I used to work for them, and I'd call tech support just to see how they were, and they seemed very competent. Generally, with less expensive ISPs, 24 hour tech support is something you don't count on. Also, I spoke to a lot of MacIntosh users who were very happy with EarthLink. EarthLink tried to be Mac friendly form the very beginnings of the internet, so EarthLink is probably your best bet for dialup access on a Mac.

One little annoyance. I thought I'd try out their software and it wiped out my "Favorites" I'd already stored in Internet Explorer. So you might want to save them before you install EarthLink's software.

Overall, not cheap, but if you need a reliable connection and want to avoid hassles connecting to the internet, probably worth it.

Local ISPs

Coverage of new FIOS (Fiber Optic) service