[Page 1: Before you call]  [Page 2: How do you choose an ISP?]  [Page 3: What is a standard account?]

Before you call
You need to figure out the following information about your computer before you choose a new Internet Service Provider (ISP).

  1. How much RAM (short term memory) does your computer have?
    Minimum: 64MB/ Preferred: 128MB.

  2. Which exact operating system is it running? If you have a PC, Windows 95 or Windows 98 or Windows NT are good. For Mac, you need Mac OS 7.6.1 or later and a Power Macintosh model computer.

  3. What speed modem do you have? What name brand is your modem? Is it internal or external?

Need help?

PC users

  1. Turn on your computer. As soon as it has finished turning on, go double click on the "My computer" icon on your desktop.

  2. Then double click on the "Control Panels" folder. Then, double click on the icon that says "system."

  3. A window should open that says either Windows 95 or Windows 98 this is your operating system. This same window should also say how much RAM your computer has installed. It will be a number such as 32MB or 64MB.

  4. Click on the X in the upper right corner of the window to close it. You can also click on the X to close the control panels folder, and then again to close the my computer window.

Mac users

  1. Turn on your computer. As soon as it has finished turning on, go to the apple icon in the upper left hand corner of your screen and choose "about this computer" or "about this Macintosh" (this should be the first choice on the menu).

  2. On the left towards the middle of the little window that comes up it should say Built-in Memory, this number (if the word MB appears after it) is the number of megabytes of RAM your computer has. If it says KB, then you divide the number by 1,000 to get the number of MB of RAM which your computer has installed.

  3. On upper right of the little window that comes up it should say Mac OS, followed by a number such as 7.6.1 or 8.6. This is the Operating system that your computer is using.

  4. Click on the square at the upper left corner of this window to close it.