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ISP reviews
| Name: |
Seniorglobe Media |
| Web Address: |
www.seniorglobe.com/ |
| Cost: |
$9.95/month for no frills dial-up |
| Setup Fee: |
$10 (waived if prepaid for year) |
| Hours included: |
150 to Unlimited |
| Postal address: |
4602 Wa Tau Ga Ave NE Browns Point, WA 98422 |
| Toll-free phone: |
866-495-9385 |
| POPs Provided by: |
usual networks and own |
| Reviewed on: |
Thu May 22 2003 |
| Reviewed by: |
ACougar |
| Rating: |
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Señor vs. Senior
Being on the tail-end of the baby-boom generation, I'm not quite distinguished enough for bifocals; however, at first glance on looking at the ISP SeniorGlobe.com, I failed to take in the "i" and thought I was about to review my first Hispanic site: Señor Globe. A natural mistake, as I'd been reading about the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and the idea that this country would soon have as many Spanish speakers as English. Like that's something new? The truth is we've been the Estados Unidos from the get-go. In 1776, more people in this land spoke Spanish than English. Our founding fathers seriously considered penning their nasty-gram to King George in Spanish just to further yank the old boy's chain.
Just as incorrectly, today, most people think that Hispanics are the hottest demographic wave, but the fact is that there's another group whose swelling numbers demand our attention, and that would be the same group that SeniorGlobe is reaching out to, the graying temple crowd. It's the Bubble, Dummy!
One thing you probably already do know is that as a whole, marketers are not terribly bright and, despite playing on the creative department softball team, are not especially creative. Whenever they identify a trend, it becomes a once and for all thing, no matter the screaming message delivered by lagging sales. Now, after two decades of romancing the youth market, Madison Ave. finds itself wondering, "Where have all children gone?" Well, quite simply, it's the bubble, dummy. For 20 years, the great population bubble of the baby boom generation made it look like the only crowd worth marketing to were the foolish young. It's about to change. Pretty soon Nike will get with it and realize that America's #1 athletic activity is mall walking and Topps will smarten up and start issuing Legends of Bingo trading cards. The reality facing us is that before long, Depends will be soaking up more bottoms than Pampers. Let's face it. America is getting long in the tooth, and hairy around the earlobes. Consider these facts that I gathered with the help of seniornet.org, an organization devoted to making those who once though Milton Berle was funny, Internet savvy.
- There are now some 70 million people in this country (about one out of four) who have celebrated their 39th birthday at least 11 times.
- Older Americans represent the fastest growing demographic, with someone turning 50 every seven seconds. According to The Wall Street Journal (can you believe those fellows still don't have a comics page), the over-65 demographic is one of the fastest-growing on the Web.
- And here's the one that makes chat room gigoloing a viable enterprise: According to pollster Lou Harris, adults over 50 are the demographic market most likely to part with money on line.
Not Your Usual Old-Age Homepage
Are you getting the picture yet? Well, SeniorGlobe certainly is. Established three years ago, according to its online mission statement, "SeniorGlobe.com exists to provide those ages 55 and over the best possible community services and information resources that the web has to offer, for little or no charge." Their pages play host to an on-line community with forums, e-mail, connectivity, computer support, and free home web pages for seniors. They also put up articles written by members. Their mottos is, "By seniors, for seniors, about seniors, this place is ours!" The Deal
SeniorGlobe also runs a tight little ISP, offering access for $9.95 with over 5000 dial up points in 49 states (Alaska is the odd man out) and Canada. They do have a $10 start-up fee, although that's waived if you purchase a year in advance. They work with four networks, two of which allow unlimited access, while the other two allow a fairly ample 150 and 200 hours of service. If you stick to their basic service -- consider it an early bird special √ SeniorGlobe is a good deal, but if you're tempted by the ala carte menu, you're going to build up a considerable tab. Spam filtering is another $1.50 a month and if you think Tom Jones was risqué, you're going to need to spend $5 a month to get a web content filter. Put your Dialup on Geritol
One of the more interesting add-ons is use of Propel Web Accelerator for $8 a month. This is not a SeniorGlobe exclusive; you can save a nickel and get it directly from Propel for $7.95. Propel is a hot little windows only product that improves download speed by a factor of anywhere from two to five times. It will reportedly work with most dialup services. (Called the real deal by several tech reviewers, I intend to look at Propel √despite the Mac snub -- in a column sometime in the next week.) SeniorGlobe is stingy with mailboxes (especially considering or maybe because the top reason that seniors use the net is for email), just one per customer, although you can order extras for a buck a month. The boxes are POP3 as well as web accessible. Recognizing people's sensitivity, user addresses are user@ ezsg.com rather than oldfogey@senior.com. They offer 24hour support, some pretty good instruction, and FAQ pages, all in a type that's large enough to keep me out of bifocals for another year or so. In their basic service they also include 10MB of FTP storage and 50MB of webspace to build your own Grey Panther chapter. And yes, they are Mac compatible. Good Deal If Your Needs Are Most Basic
In an effort to compare apples to apples when you add extra mailboxes along with spam and web filtering you end up with a setup that is actually just as pricey as AOL and Earthlink, and without the virus protection. They also have an okay start page, but if staying abreast of things elderly is important to you, SeniorNet.org offers a far superior start page (although no ISP service). All considered there are better deals, but out of respect for my elders (thank god I can still say that), and in consideration of finding no significant problems, I give these folks three thumbs up. |
