When you fill your tank, odds are you go for regular unleaded gas, not premium. And while you may appreciate a $50 bottle of cabernet, you probably don't drink one with dinner every night. Yet if you have a dial-up Internet connection, I'll bet you pay premium prices of $20 to $24 per month.

If all you do online is check e-mail and surf the Web a bit after work, you're paying too much. A low-cost ISP can give you nearly the same service for less than half the cost. Not surprisingly, the cheapsters are putting a big-time hurt on large dial-up providers.

Pop quiz time
Can you name the nation's No. 3 dial-up service provider? If you said EarthLink, you'd be only half right. According to ISP Planet, the Atlanta-based ISP is in a virtual dead heat for third place with United Online, the parent company of cheapskate ISPs NetZero, Juno, and Bluelight.

United's subscribers pay less than half of what most EarthLink customers do ($10 vs. $22 a month). They're not the only low-cost option, either. Small service providers such as Copper.net are also thriving. Since 1997, this Ohio-based ISP has been offering nationwide access for as low as $8.25 a month, says Mike Cook, VP of marketing. Even so, Cook says the company has always been profitable.

What's the catch?
Sure, you snicker, these guys may be cheaper, but you get what you pay for, right? Well, yes. But with big ISPs, you may be paying for things you don't need. Such as:

Exclusive content. Sure, AOL and MSN churn out terabytes of exclusive stuff for subscribers, and EarthLink offers some groovy tools such as a pop-up ad blocker. But most of the content is video or audio that would drive you nuts if you tried to stream it over a 56K line, and none of it is all that exclusive; you can find equivalent information, clips, and software for free on elsewhere on the Net.

Proprietary software. To use AOL or MSN, you have to install gargantuan software applications, which seem to get bigger and more unstable with each release. If you're my mother-in-law, you probably need the hand-holding these interfaces offer. But if you aren't my mother-in-law (and most people aren't), you'd do just fine with whatever browser and e-mail client came on your PC.

Mega mailboxes. Many premium ISPs give you eight or nine mailboxes with 10MB of storage apiece. That's great if you have a large family (or belong to a small cult) and need to share a dial-up connection among many housemates. But be honest: do you use all those in-boxes? I do just fine with one, which is what ISPs such as NetZero or Copper.net provide. If I really need more e-mail addresses, I can always turn to Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.

Tech support. Support is one area where cheap ISPs can't compete with AOL, MSN, or EarthLink, which all offer toll-free 24/7 support. For example, NetZero makes you pay $2 a minute for phone support, and its free e-mail support didn't really work when I tried it. But Copper.net offers free, toll-free support 12 hours a day during the week and 9 hours on Saturdays. That's not bad for a service that costs less than $100 a year.

Caveats, anyone?
Of course, you shouldn't go for just any cheap ISP. You want one that's been in business at least three years and has a good track record with the Better Business Bureau. A money-back guarantee is good (Copper.net offers 30 days), as well as a physical address and a phone number on the Web site where you can reach a live human.



ISP Q&A

Question: I send out a newsletter to the same 47 people each week. I created a group in Outlook Express with everyone's e-mail address and added it to the To line of my e-mail message. Unfortunately, when it arrives in people's in-boxes, the message displays all the e-mail addresses of everyone in the group. Is there some way to suppress these addresses so that I'm not accidentally sharing everyone's contact information?



Answer: Sure thing; the secret is to put your group address in the BCC field so that nobody else can see it. First, you need to make sure you can see the BCC field (since Outlook Express's default setting is to hide it). Open up a new message in Outlook Express (File > New > Mail Message), select View, and make sure All Headers has a check mark next to it. Then, add your group to the BCC field and send your message. Then none of your readers will know who else is getting the news.