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Good morning John Valenti, I've been using SBC/Yahoo DSL at home for a while now, and I'm quite pleased with it. (They have plans that start at between $19.99 to $34.99 a month for a year of service, depending on speeds and IP address type you want.) SBC also offers some discounts if you group other SBC services together, such as SBC local phone and long distance services, Cingular wireless, and others. If you already have SBC for your local and long distance, you can lump them together on one bill and reap some small additional savings. The lowest price tends to be available if you signup online. As for roaming and travel, SBC also offers SBC Freedomlink service, which is a pay-as-you-use hotspot service for access around the country. See: http://www05.sbc.com/Products_Services/Residential/ProdInfo_1/1,,1315--10-3-3,00.html for some more details, including a link on that page to available hotspots in every state. SBC is contracting to provide internet service in McDonald's, Barnes & Noble, Wyndam Hotels, and Embassy Suites, and other locations in every state. Unfortunately, they aren't everywhere, but the are in a surprising number of locations. They have two Freedomlink plans: in plan one, you buy a pre-paid activation code that gives you a certain number of sessions good for 24 hours of service at the location where you activate them. So, you look up your destination, find a Freedomlink access point in that area, you can get three sessions for $25.00 prepaid. For someone who travels a lot, and knows they will be in an area with FreedomLink hotspots, you can also buy a membership which bills you $19.95 a month for unlimited access to any Freedomlink hotspot in the country. I basically got one free Freedomlink session free with my SBC/Yahoo DSL service, and it does work pretty well. If you know where you are going, and there is a Freedomlink AP at or near your destination, this isn't a bad way to get access if there isn't anything free around. It's a little cheaper that the Toshiba MyConnect plan (which is $29.95 a month, or $18.95 for 30 hours through their MyConnect hotspots used in 30 days of activation.) You can always try your luck at finding a free hotspot as well. Do a Google search on "wifi hotspot locator" and you'll find lots of options including JWire (a service mostly funded by advertising), as well as a few open source, public domain efforts to map EVERY existing wireless AP in the country. These effort rely on people to report APs in their area, often times found by people wardriving with wireless sniffers to try and map the names and locations of hotspots. As with anything free, you do get what you pay for, and the service isn't always reliable. In the Cincinati airport (where I was stuck last fall with a long layover due to a flight cancellation last fall) they advertise free WiFi service in the terminal buildings. However, I found that if I wasn't sitting directly underneath an AP, my signal was mostly worthless, and speed was closer to a 56K modem, or the connection dropped more than it was up, etc. When high-speed services became available, I swore I wouldn't buy until the price came down to about $20-$25 per month. I was paying about $20 a month for my second phone line to do dialup without tying up my primary phone line. At that price point, dropping the second phone line and getting DSL while keeping my primary phone line and number was almost a wash from a cost perspective. I don't push the online gaming envelop very hard, and I'm not running any services at home that need a fixed IP, so the basic residential DSL service more than meets my family needs at home. If your retired professor is in a similar situation, perhaps that is all they will need as well. I hope this info helps. John A. Resotko Head of Systems Administration Michigan State University College of Law 208 Law College Building East Lansing, MI 48824-1300 email: [log in to unmask] Phone: 517-432-6836 Fax: 517-432-6861 >>> John Valenti <[log in to unmask]> 04/19 3:09 PM >>> 1. Do people have any good strategies for cheap wireless while traveling? I suggest to people that they look for hotels with free wireless and visit Panera's, Beaners etc. Any other good sources? And I was wondering if there might be a similar service to the Merit 800 for nationwide wireless access. (I saw an ad from Toshiba offering this) Would it be a good idea for Merit/MSU to get into a system like that? 2. One of our retired profs lives in East Lansing. They have been using dialup, I finally recommended that they get broadband. Should I suggest they get ACD ($20/mo for 6 months, then $50/mo) or SBC for $20/mo. Or something else - they do have cable tv, so a cable modem is an option. I know ACD gives them an MSU IP, but I don't know how important that is anymore (is it worth $180/year?). Thanks for your advice. -John