[UFO Chicago] SBC/Yahoo DSL Service

[Richard Royston]

Brian Sobolak wrote:

<snip>

> Is there a strong reason why you have to upgrade?  From what I understand,
> it's primarily a marketing thing, NOT technical.  I use SBC and have
> absolutely no plans to do so.

I "chose" SBC/Ameritech because no-one else would/could provide a DSL
line. Their email facility, however, sucks. I travel a fair bit, and I
can neither forward my email nor access their POP server from most PC's
that are publically available in libraries, internet cafes &c. Nor can I
access my email directly from the web. So I have to have 2 email
addresses, one on SBC/Ameritech and one on the web at hotmail. It gets
very confusing for my correspondents and very tedious for me. If I
"upgrade" I will be able to access my SBC/Ameritech (or, rather,
SBC/Yahoo) email directly on the web as well as from a POP server. I
don't have to do that, but it would represent a very useful enhancement
for me.

In addition, I keep getting more and more urgent requests for me to
"upgrade" from SBC/Yahoo. I fear that at some point SBC/Ameritech will
pull the plug on providing their own logins to the concentrator (or
whatever it is) directly, and on their own POP server &c. While their
impulse may primarily be marketing, I fear that there will eventually be
physical consequences (i.e. inability to connect or access email any
more) to a failure to upgrade.

For these reasons I would like to upgrade now while there's still time
to do it deliberately - whenever I try to do anything like this in a
hurry I find that not being an experienced system administrator leads me
to make all sorts of stupid mistakes which it takes me ages to overcome.

Richard Royston