High-speed Internet is where it’s at, baby! But there are plenty of reasons why you may be among the 10 percent of the Internet-using population who connect via dial-up modem, slow though it is. Dial-up is a heck of a lot less expensive than broadband. And its availability is incredible—you can find a phone jack in almost any room in the civilized world, in places where the closest Ethernet or WiFi network is miles away.
To get online by dial-up, you need a PC with a modem—maybe an external USB model—and a dial-up account. You sign up with a company called an Internet service provider (or ISP, as insiders and magazines inevitably call them).
National ISPs like EarthLink and AT&T have local telephone numbers in every U.S. state and in many other countries. If you don’t travel much, you may not need such broad coverage. Instead, you may be able to save money by signing up for a local or regional ISP. In fact, you can find ISPs that are absolutely free (if you’re willing to look at ads), or that cost as little as $4 per month (if you promise not to call for tech support). Google can be your friend here.
Even if you have a cable modem or DSL, you can generally add dial-up access to the same account for another few bucks a month. You’ll be happy to have that feature if you travel a lot (unless your cable modem comes with a really long cord).
In any case, dialing the Internet is a local call for most people.
Microsoft expects that you’ve contacted an ISP on your own. It assumes that you’re equipped with either (a) a setup CD from that company or (b) a user name, password, and dial-up phone number from that ISP, which is pretty much all you really need to get online.
Your only remaining task is to plug that information into Windows. (And, of course, to plug your computer into the phone jack on the wall.)
POWER USERS’ CLINIC: Secret Hotspots
It’s entirely possible for you to be standing right in the
middle of a juicy, strong WiFi hotspot—and not even know it. Its
name doesn’t show up in the 
list.
It turns out that the owner can choose whether or not the hotspot should broadcast its name. Sometimes, he might want to keep the hotspot secret—to restrict its use to employees at a coffee shop, for example, so that the common customer riffraff can’t slow it down. In these cases, you’d have to know (a) that the hotspot exists, and (b) what its name is.
Sometimes, you see “Unidentified network” right there in the list of available networks (shown in Figure 13-1, top right). If so, great—select it, enter the name and password, and off you go.
If not, open the Network and Sharing Center (The Network and Sharing Center). Select “Set up a new connection or network.” On the next screen, choose “Manually connect to a wireless network,” and then hit Next.
Now enter the network’s exact name and password. You’ll probably want to turn on “Start this connection automatically,” too, if you think you might encounter the hotspot again later.
When you click Next, you’ll get a notification that you’ve successfully connected (if, in fact, you have).
To do that, open the Network and Sharing Center (The Network and Sharing Center). In the main window, click “Set up a new connection or network.” Double-click “Set up a dial-up connection,” and follow the instructions on the screen.