Which ISP?

So with all of these to think about who should I choose?

At the present there is no reason not to try one or more of these free ISPs. If it all goes wrong then you've lost nothing. You could then try one of the larger ISP's for a free trial, to see what use you will be making of it's features. You must however be ruthless. Some still charge an hourly rate on top of you phone bill - so keep a clock handy. You might want to consider getting a second telephone line put in as some telephone companies offer special rates with internet access thrown in.

But Who?

I myself have had personal experience with the CompuServe, AOL, Pipex, MSN, Electronic, Edex, INS, Flexnet, Freeserve, Cable Internet, Demon and others. All of these have their place and I suggest you go out and by a few computing magazines and see what falls out - usually an AOL and a CompuServe CD. By the way AOL and CompuServe are both owned by the same company and both still charge hourly rates).

If you want an ISP for a society then you might want to have a central account with multiple users. This can get expensive as you will probably be treated as a business and so can add a zero or two onto all prices. A simple solution is to get a single account and use it to forward messages to other accounts. As long as you can organise the forwarding it can save a lot of money.

Using an example of myself I use 3 accounts regularly. If I am e-mailed as the webmaster@www.rsc.stamps.uk then it will be forwarded to my mailbox for stamps.org.uk. this is then forwarded to my mailbox at work - or if it's after 6pm it goes to my ISP where I pick up my mail from home. When I get into work in the morning I also pick up my mail from my ISP just to make sure I have everything!

This all sounds very complicated - but it means that for an organisation there can be one central account with multiple mail boxes - all forwarding to different individuals personal email accounts on their own ISPs. These can all be on different systems for people with different technology skills and confidence.

For an up-to-date list of internet service providers in the UK visit: www.limitless.co.uk/inetuk