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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: Blah! Of course they want you to have their site defaulted... between the cookies (marketing/tracking), adware, and other unwanted info collected about you and resold (Gator), they have a lot of $$$ to be made by having you visit their portal. | |
| 
AmeritecTech
Change we can believe in, 1922
Premium
join:2002-09-06
Houston, TX
| BBR Poll? Yes, but a BBR poll is more likely to poll more savvy users. Broadband companies are marketing to the millions of "Joe AOL"'s in the market.
--
Independent thinkers tend to ALWAYS have someone not agreeing with them. It's the non-thinkers that always come in legions." -John Callari | |
| 
dadkins
Can you do Blu?
Premium,MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA
 ·Comcast
| Portal? If they are talking about Comcast's "The Fan", then yea, I use it. I only have the "Expanded Basic" cable TV, I use The Fan to watch TechTV show clips because TechTV is on channel 294 here(Expanded Basic only goes to channel 82)and G4 isn't even offered. | |
| | | | RPSwartley
join:2001-04-04
Boulder, CO | Don't need no stinking portal ... What I need, amoung other thing, is dependable service, a fair price, competant support and oh yes, NO CAPS! If Comcast would concentrate on providing the service we pay them for instead of portals I would be a much happier customer. | |
| newyorkslick
join:2001-12-19
Rosedale, NY | ISP Portals Web Portals Im sticking with Yahoo, Straight and Simple, without the overkill with ads and content. Best Web based E-mail and Search Engine too | |
| | Flizesh
Premium
join:2003-08-16
Staten Island, NY
clubs:
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Re: ISP Portals Web Portals meh... only time I go to earthlink.net is when I want to add a new e-mail account, or something like that. If I need to know the weather i have weather.com, and I don't care for anything there really.
If it was something useful/entertaining i'd go.. but it isn't. | |
| 
Tomek
Premium
join:2002-01-30
Brooklyn, NY
 ·Packet8
| Plain and simple I hate portals, too much crap.
That's why I have bookmarks to get to the pages with content.
On browser startup, I always have google. Plain and simple universal portal.
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There are 32 types of people.Those who understand HEX and those who don't. | |
| 
armitage
join:2004-01-04
philippines
·mydestiny cable
| portals... never used them... on screen crap and whatnots that just eat my time... id rather default to yahoo or google (but right now, broadbandreports.com is definitely becoming a winnier in my book)
--
A friend of mine said this about a Ford... "Why so I can Fix Or Repair Daily?" | |
| 
3SGTE
ST215W
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-23
there
clubs:
| Cogeco just introduced one: »my.cogeco.ca/en/index_portal_o.html
Like I said. It is new.
It has some value, it has all of the links in one place that one could need for Cogeco and their newly introduced webmail.
It is much more useful than trying to browse the cogeco.com website to try and find this info.
Also, all the links at the top of the Cogeco forum here are unobtainable recently, "table cannot contain..."
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I killed all of your ugly smilies! Plain text smilies for me! | |
| 
plencnerb
Premium
join:2000-09-25
Franksville, WI
clubs:
·RoadRunner Cable
| Never go to the ISP Sites Just wanted to add my comments on this. I never go to the ISP site at all, unless I want to check my e-mail on their server.
The only reason I do that is I keep my e-mail on the server for 3 days, and that allows me to go out and check the mail that is "spam" and forward it on.
Other then that one feature, I never visit Comcast's webpage. I have no need to, when I have bookmarks to all the other sites where I get information (this one, weather.com, etc). Why go there when there are other sites that fit my needs?
I also agree that the ISP should put more of their $$ into making sure their service is always up and running, rather then stupid Portals on their homepage.
--
============================
--Brian Plencner
E-Mail: saursesCancer@comcast.net
Note: Kill Cancer to Reply via e-mail | |
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dmd8605
join:2001-12-13
West Milton, OH | I don't use one And my start page is the one and only Fark.com | |
| 
DHRacer
Fire Survivor
join:2000-10-10
Lake Arrowhead, CA
·Charter Pipeline
 ·Verizon west (ex G..
| No Portal, Only Google! I have my start up page to be news.google.com. I can see the latest news (I have no TV to watch) and I can use the best search engine anytime.
Verizon doesn't have much of a page, the one and only time I looked. After that, I never look at my ISP's webpage. Never.
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The three most dangerous things are a programmer with a soldering iron, a manager who codes, and a user who gets ideas. | |
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major marco
Res Firma Mitescere Nescit
Premium
join:2003-02-13
Stepford, CA
clubs:
| Useless & Redundant ISPs who want to be "portals" are about as useful to the consumer that a bike is to a fish. This is probably just another ploy to justify jacking up the monthly access price. If the ISP calls it a "service" then they can charge extra.
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MoveOn.org -DigitalConsumer.org - FTCR.org - Privacy.org - Adbusters.org - Eff.com - Democraticmedia.org - HealthPrivacy.org - Hacktivismo.com - ClearChannelSucks.org - Epic.org - ArnoldWatch.org | |
| | 
kwitko
Shacklyn Nights
Premium
join:2000-06-10
Middle Village, NY | Actually... The poll indicated users couldn't care less. | |
| 
roztaylor
join:2000-10-21
Madison, AL
·AT&T Yahoo
| What a coincidence! Just last week I contacted Comcast HSI tech support to suggest they offer a bare bones internet connection at 1500/256 for people like me--at a reduced rate, of course! 
I use BBR as my web startup page for Netscape and a picture of my cat as my IE startup page. I have bookmarks for my frequently visited web sites and use google to find those sites I don't know directly.
I do some surfing (mostly to find something in particular--not just to browse and see what is 'out there'). I download patches, updates, and upgrades to software I own. I occasionally download trial software or purchase software off of the net. I occasionally listen to ClassicFM in London or WVXU in Cincinnati via the net, but other than that I'm not using a lot of bandwidth as a rule.
I hate waiting for web pages to load, so don't want dial-up--as so many web sites don't have dial-up "viewing options". Also, I don't want to spend hours downloading upgrades, patches, and virus definitions.
Last time I checked, Comcast's portal page did not give the user options of what to display on the page and where to display it or NOT to display it (other than not to go to the page).
ANYHOW--tech support's response was "...we are sorry you are having problems with your connection" (I wasn't) and then went on to extole the virtue of their portal and its content "server".
Of course, I responded that I had not reported a problem, and that I did not use their content page, etc. Basically, I outlined the same stuff as above--trying to keep it to simple words of one or two syllables since the reply indicated they weren't very good at reading my messages.
Hey, for people like me a cap of 1500/256 for a lower fee would leave more bandwidth available for those of you do download and upload gigabytes of stuff routinely.
I have friends and relatives who need that content because they can't find the search button on their browser--let them pay the support cost for that hand-holding. I only need my hand held when I get software or hardware conflicts!
Just my two-cents, and it probably isn't worth event that! 
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Choose to make it a good day... don't wait for something good to happen! | |
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kevver
join:2003-12-11
Palatine, IL | Portals may not work in your browser The SBC-Yahoo portal only works with IE, a browser I refuse to use.
Google is my portal here. | |
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GeekNJ
Premium
join:2000-09-23
Waldwick, NJ
| Why an ISP Portal? With the widespread use of other portals such as My Yahoo, My Excite, MyWay.com, etc, there's obviously a need for them. Customization for what a customer wants to see is paramount for getting them to make it their home page.
Now why does an ISP want their portal to be a customers home page? Well, the following are probably the big reasons:
1) Announcements regarding the service
2) New enhancements/upgrades available ($$)
3) Promotion of partnerships with other companies ($$)
4) Support/FAQs preventing live agent (online or phone) support ($$)
5) The feeling that you're getting added value from the ISP
You could probably come up with a few more, but the ones with the $$'s are the big reasons.
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Have you tweaked your OOL connection? | |
| | 
macyh
Ex-Isp
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-24
Medina, OH
·Armstrong Zoom In..
1 edit | Re: Why an ISP Portal? said by GeekNJ  :
With the widespread use of other portals such as My Yahoo, My Excite, MyWay.com, etc, there's obviously a need for them...
You're right on the mark. Technically adroit users know what they want and go there directly. Less proficient users, which comprises a very significant segment of the population, want an easy to use, visually interesting page laid out in a manner similar to a newspaper page.
Lots of market research and development have been put into this topic. Broadband end users don't expect to pay any more for this service, but they will tolerate ad's if they are not too intrusive (and interesting). Large ervice providers find these portals not only add value to the average end user, the SP actually does sell more add-on services and produces move partner revenue with the in-page ad placements. AOL and Earthlink proved this business strategy in dialup, but in broadband Yahoo currently gets the best results.
FWIW, the buzz in the service provider marketing dept's is about whey MSN has done so poorly at being a broadband potral partner while Yahoo has done so well.
--
Macy Hallock Ex-APK Net, Inc. Cleveland, OH, recently sold
Looking for a southern ISP/WISP/host to buy or invest in. | |
| 
viperpa33s
Why Me?
Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL
·Bright House
| I couldn't care less either way Sprint updated there site for broadband, Earthlink updated there site for broadband and I don't use either one of them. I just go to the websites I need to, and get the info I need to get. I don't care whether the site is optimized. Give a reliable connection, good tech support, no caps, at a good price, I don't care about anything else.
Anyways I don't hardly use IE anymore, I use Firebird. If I miss something cause I used Firebird, no loss to me. It just makes me more of a conscientious computer user. | |
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