Worldspy

Important Note: On June 30, 2000, Worldspy ended their service. Worldspy was formerly our highest rated free ISP. Our review of their service is below. Visit the Message Boards or our article about Worldspy for more information.

At the beginning of April, Worldspy released a new version of their software. The new version solves almost all of the problems we've been experiencing with the old version.

Verson 1.0 of Worldspy's software was an 8MB download, which was much larger than any other free ISP. The software also seemed very buggy and difficult to use. The new version weighs in at a trim 1.3MB download, and is much quicker and easier to use than the old version. Combine that with the fact that there are no advertisements with Worldspy's service, and the stellar results of our tests, and we judge Worldspy a winner!

Worldspy is somewhat unique among the free Internet access services in that they are an Internet retailer. Instead of selling ads to pay for your free connection, they direct you to their store every time you log on, hoping that you'll purchase something from them. Like many of the free ISP's, it remains to be seen whether this business model will work. Based on some of the feedback we've seen, a fair number of users are driven to purchase at Worldspy's website not only because Worldspy's home page pops up at logon, but because they'd like to keep Worldspy in business to keep their free Internet service around.

During our tests of Worldspy's Internet service, we were always able to achieve a speedy connection, and never experienced a busy signal. Even during peak Internet usage periods, Worldspy's service delivered a speedy and stable connection.

We haven't tested the technical support departments at the free ISP's, though we will do so when we run our second round of tests in a month or so. We have heard from some of our users, however, that Worldspy's tech support is top-notch. We're unable to compare that with other services, but it might be something worth considering when choosing a free ISP.

Also important to note is Worldspy doesn't require a lot of information about you to set up your service. In addition, they don't have any advertisers to sell your data to, and they claim that they don't track your web usage, although they are permitted to by their privacy policy.

We're giving Worldspy 4.5 stars. They miss that extra half-point only because of some minor issues that users have reported regarding installing Worldspy on older versions of Windows 95. We also wish they'd remove the taskbar icon while the software is running, since they already have an icon in the tray.

More information about Worldspy:

Main Worldspy Page
User Reviews
Message Boards

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