By Gary Kirchherr
The free lunch is over.
For more than a year the Macatawa Area Free-Net has offered Internet access at no cost. But the harsh realities of an overburdened system has forced the MacNet board to make a change.
Even though the free accounts have been limited to a mere half-hour of online time a day, the system is swamped. MacNet has continued to add phone lines, but logging on any time in the late afternoon and evening is a time-consuming challenge.
This problem gave the MacNet board a challenge of its own -- balancing its original vision of free Internet access with the realities of the finite resources available. And to its credit, the board has come up with a fair compromise.
Every personal user will have to reregister -- and pay a $10 annual subscription fee up front to do so. In other words, no more free access. The four plans covering personal accounts are as follows:
-- "Base Membership" won't cost anything above and beyond the $10 subscription, but users will be limited to a half-hour a day. More significantly, they will not have system access between 7 p.m. and midnight.
-- The "20 Membership" offers 20 hours a month for $5.
-- The "40 Membership" plan has 40 hours and costs $10 a month.
-- The "Unlimited Membership" option costs $18 a month.
These plans cover only personal users; non-profit organizations get unlimited access for their $10 fee, while educator-access accounts will be free.
As for business accounts, a notable change is that MacNet no longer is going to tolerate the use of "personal" Web pages for business purposes. Some MacNet members from the beginning have flouted the spirit of MacNet by using their free, personal Web pages to advertise their for-profit ventures, and I for one will be glad to see this practice come to an end.
Many MacNet members won't like these policy changes. This is to be expected; after all, they're being asked to pay for something they're used to getting for free. But $10 a year -- 83 cents a month -- is more than fair, even without evening access. What's more, the extra income will make it easier for MacNet to upgrade its equipment and provide better service to everyone. It certainly will make record-keeping easier -- those uninterested in the system won't have their unused accounts clogging the system.
The rate hikes won't be a panacea for what ails MacNet. It can't provide the customer service a private ISP can, and it still relies on Hope College's heavily truncated Usenet feed. But its low cost provides an Internet-access alternative for those who can't afford or don't need a more expensive option. In this regard, MacNet has succeeded. And getting rid of the omnipresent busy signals will make it better.
For more information on these changes, check out MacNet's home page at www.macatawa.org.
One more note on MacNet. The service now is selling the Netscape Dial-up Kit (NetDUK), fully configured for MacNet use, for $30. But it's only for Windows 3.x and Windows 95 users; MacNet board member Marvin Martin Jr. informs me that NetDUK for Macintosh isn't available.
Let me offer an alternative for fellow disgruntled Mac users: the book "Netscape Navigator Starter Kit for Macintosh" by Mark Brown and John Christopher. This excellent resource teaches you everything you need to know to use Navigator 3.0. And it comes with a CD that includes a fully licensed copy of (almost) everybody's favorite Web browser. All for $35. This is a deal that can't be beat.