More Mac Discrimination

Barry Ritholtz wrote:

"Qwest just announced what sounds like an excellent deal: $24.95 per month gets you Qwest long distance service, including 250 free minutes each month. That works out to 10 cents a minute, which is in line with MCI and AT&T. But Qwest also throws in unlimited internet access for free! Sounds like a great deal . . . but.... For some bizarre reason, the otherwise intelligent folks at Qwest have decided that their free ISP access/long distance combo is for Windows only - in addition to some other bizarre system requirements. I think we need to let Qwest know that there are other platforms which would like to use their services." [No nasty spam, please! -- Bill]

Dana Baggett wrote:

"Our local paper carried a news story about AltaVista providing free ISP internet access. It's for Windoze only at this point. No e-mail yet. Might be a good deal if and when...."

In both cases all the ISPs have to do is register an ID and password and provide a telephone access number and name server addresses and one can manually configure Remote Access (OT/PPP or FreePPP) and TCP/IP on a Mac. However, they are using software to obtain the necessary information and to configure the computer instead of a more costly (apparently) human and the software is currently Windows only. A workaround might be to sign up using Virtual PC and then to copy the appropriate settings to the Mac's control panels. [Update: FreeAccess works with Virtual PC but transferring the settings to Remote Access and TCP/IP apparently does not. I get an authorization failure or a freeze when I try to connect. In VPC, making the FreeAccess connection launches Internet Explorer, locates an advertising panel over IE's task bars and starts up with AltaVista's portal page. The ad panel is not overly intrusive and it can be moved to access the task bars but if closed, a disconnect occurs. It occurs to me that this sort of free 56K internet access provided by Apple with an Apple portal and support from carefully-selected and Mac-related ad revenue from third parties could be a smart free option for the consumer Macs, iMac and iBook, to counter the "free" PC movement without losing hardware revenue.--Bill]