By road warriors I mean those of you with a portable computer who travel, need to keep in touch with the office, or are just addicted to the Internet and can' t live without access to your EMail (like me). If this sounds like you, you need an ISP (Internet Service Provider) that has local phone connections throughout the country. America Online will do that for you, but I've been using IBM Global Network, http://www.ibm.net/, and I like it a lot! IBMGN has over 1200 local phone numbers for you to access so you can get a local number in almost any area of any state. Certainly all the major cities in a state have a local access number. But if you're really a road warrior and go out of the U.S. it turns out IBM GN has local numbers in every major European country, plus Asia, Australia, Japan, etc. Frankly, I was shocked when I discovered that you could even download their software in Macintosh format from their web site.
The IBM Global Network has saved my life several times. I was at a conference in Atlanta last year when I was asked to give a presentation on the Way Cool Software Reviews Project. I didn't have any notes or slides with me, but I did have my computer and modem. I found a local Atlanta phone number in the IBM sofware and spent several hours on the internet downloading an article on the project from the Way Cool Software Reviews Project web site http://www.pappanikou.uconn.edu/wcool.html plus web pages of several of the software reviews on the web site. (Cost - 75 cents for a local call).
I put together a presentation using Netscape and the reviews I had downloaded and faxed my notes from the article to the front desk of the hotel (since I hadn’t brought a printer). Technology, including a big boost from IBM, saved me. Ain’t technology wonderful?!
My credit card bill indicates that I’m paying about $21 a month for unlimited access to the internet via IBM Global Network. You may know that AT&T recently purchased the IBM Global Network. However, so far I’ve noticed absolutely no difference in the service. You can use this service for web pages and Email, but I only use it as my access to the internet. By the way, they have 24 hour a day service, seven days a week and you get to talk to a real person. The person may not know a lot about Mac’s, but they do their best to help.
If you don’t travel out of state and you’re not addicted to Email, there’s probably no good reason to use a service like IBM Global Network. But if you if you do you may like this service.
If anything changes with IBM Global Network, I’ll post that here
on the CS Bulletin site. If you have other internet services or experience
you’d like to share, let us know.
C. Rucker