My first ISP back in '97 was AOL. After 6 months I finally dumped them and have stayed away from all large ISP's since.

I can't stand MSN either. Last month my Mother-in-law's ISP (QWEST DSL) was taken over by MSN. I told her she needed to switch ISPs before the takeover. Unfortunatly she didn't want to mess around with it and accepted the change.

Last week, She couldn't log into her MSN account. She called tech support, and got a ditz on the phone. the ditz had her check her dial-up protocols. She came up against one she didn't recognize which I had set up for her (Internet Connection Sharing TCP/IP). Since the ditz didn't know what that was she told her to delete it. Luckily my mother-in-law who knows very little about computers, but was smart enough to know that this ditz knew less, hung up and called me before taking the advice of a tech support professional who happened to have the brain power of a brick.

Later she called back and got a more intelligent techie on the phone who solved her problem, which had absolutely nothing to do with Internet Connection Sharing.

For the record I have a friend who does OS tech support for Microsoft. He's an absolute genius, but he tells me horror stories about the trash they put on the phones to fill chairs. I have another friend who trains people for a company that does AOL's billing. He says the caliber of people he has to train is also pretty low.

As for ISP's, I have my favorite local ISP with which I have never had a problem.

-Steve G.