An RVer asks:  "Just curious why Juno hasn't become the RVer's best friend".

Pat Wall's glowing description of Juno is, IMHO, somewhat too pessimistic about the prospects for Web access while traveling. And while $9.95/month for an ISP may seem a lot more expensive than getting Juno for free, it's still a pretty small part of most people's budget, and we think we get a tremendous amount of value for that investment.

Pat made a nice case for Juno. For the newbies who are dithering about which option to choose, I'll try to make a case for an ISP instead of Juno

We are spending $9.95/month for Sprynet. For that we get seven hours of free on-line time (we  rarely use more than seven hours, and it's only $1.95/hour for additional time).   The account includes up to 5 MB of storage for a free personal Web Page. We get a large list of local numbers to call, plus an 800 number to use when there is no local number. The 800 number costs an additional 8.2 cents a minute, so a typical call to download EMail costs less than the price of one postage stamp. {update:  Mindspring has absorbed Sprynet.   I don't know if the above prices represent a special "grandfather" plan, or whether they are available to new Mindspring subscribers.  We originally had a Canadian 800 number and quite a few Canadian local numbers, but all Canadian coverage was discontinued by Mindspring, who say they will have a Canadian 800  number "soon"}.  I've found an inexpensive International phone service called Titan which offers an 800 number for computer use in Canada, at low rates.  I'll try that next summer.

Pat's description of driving to the next town to find a local Juno number means that she spent a lot more on fuel and vehicle maintenance than I would have spent for 800 charges for the same call (it's pretty hard to keep a car running for less than 10 cents a mile). Once she gets Juno working with her  low-cost calling card, she'll be spending $0.135/minute for long distance calls, compared to my $0.082/minute for the 800 number.

As Pat points out, the availability of a modem hookup in a campground is often limited to the few minutes needed for an automatic batch upload and download of EMail. But what people may not realize is that some kinds of Web access are also quite fast. Furthermore, the speed of uploading and downloading mail is often limited by the remote server, not by the phone line, so that I can sometimes have my Web browser transferring data simultaneously with my EMail software without significantly increasing the total time of the call.

One example is that I can have Quicken download current prices for our mutual funds (so I'll know whether we can afford to eat this month). I can start Quicken before I go to the phone, and initiate this data download with one key click after the phone connection is made. It only takes 10 seconds or so by itself, and effectively takes even less, since it runs concurrently with downloading EMail.

Another example is to use one of the all-purpose pre-programmed Web Pages such as Excite.com. This can be set up in advance to automatically download whatever information you like to receive regularly - weather forecasts for selected cities, sports scores, stories in specific news categories, etc. Again, once on-line, a single key click initiates the download, which happens quickly and concurrently with mail.

Another example: Our ongoing travelogue is stored on our own personal Web Page, along with other documents and data that other RVers might find useful. When it is time to update our Web Page, adding a new chapter to the travelogue or uploading some other new or modified document, I can set up the upload in advance, so that after we hook up the phone and make the connection, a couple of key clicks initiates the data transfer, and it generally only takes 10 seconds or so. As with the other examples, it can run concurrently with mail transfer.

Browsing the Web does indeed take a lot more on-line time, and often isn't practical. But sometimes it is possible, as I've noted in previous messages about modem friendly campgrounds.

In the past month, we've been able to conveniently get substantial on-line Web browsing time on several occasions. Some examples

Silverton RV Park, in Las Vegas has phone hookups at every site. The sites were cheap ($9.95 + tax), and calls cost $.50. Barb Hoffmeister's wonderful newsletter told us about this place. I probably spent a couple of hours on-line, catching up on Bik's Picks (Thanks Bik!), reading the latest stuff on the RV Club Web page, responding to the "Question of the Week", etc. I downloaded the draft of a delightful new book about fulltiming, and spent a wonderful evening reading it (the home page of this fulltiming couple was a Bik's Pik a week or two ago).

Kaibab Kamper Village, near the North Rim of Grand Canyon, has a modem hookup on the porch of the office, available 24 hours a day. As long as no one else was waiting to use the phone, I could stay on-line as long as I wanted. One of the nice things about Web Browsing is that if someone else walks up to use the phone, I can just pull the plug and leave immediately, coming back to continue later. (I can't stop if I'm transferring a large file. But this is rare, and when I need to do so, I'll generally do it late at night or very early in the morning, when I'm unlikely to be interrupted)

At several campgrounds, my modem phone connection has been via the phone line which the office uses for their credit card transactions. If I can set up my laptop at a place in the office where I'm not in the way, I will ask the office person if they mind whether I stay on-line for an extended period - explaining that I can hang up instantly if they need to process a credit card. I'm not inconveniencing them at all, and if I choose a non-busy time, the chances are pretty good that I can stay connected as long as I want.

Last summer, after being in very remote portions of northern Newfoundland for a week, we were very anxious to get our EMail. We found a large motel near the Labrador Ferry, and simply walked in, explained what we needed to the desk clerk, and asked if we could plug in to one of their phones. They seemed quite happy to oblige. Earlier, we were having trouble figuring out how to receive our forwarded paper mail, and asked this same motel if we could have a Federal Express package sent to their address, to be held until we came back through the area a week later to pick it up. Again, they were happy to oblige. (Mail forwarded to "general delivery" at a rural Canadian Post Office, through the US and Canadian Post Offices, can take up to two weeks to arrive).

People in rural areas are generally very friendly and very helpful. I suspect that if we had walked up to a random house, explained our EMail problem, and asked to use their phone, we would have been invited in and asked to stay for lunch while the mail was downloading. Just don't try this in a big city.

The Kinkos phones, which Pat and others have mentioned, generally have signs asking that you limit your use to five minutes. But the main purpose of this limit is to avoid keeping other people waiting. There are often several phones available, and if I go at a time when no one else is likely to be using the phones, I can stay on-line for as long as I like. I've never received a complaint. And if the phones are all in use and someone *is* waiting, I just hang up, wait until the phones are free again, and then reconnect.

Several people have reported that the phones on the tables in truck stop restaurants are available to you for the duration of your meal - that can be quite a lot of time. Even a cup of coffee and a donut is probably worth about 15 minutes. Just don't drop the donut crumbs into your keyboard <g>

> ... I just plug into their
>phone jack, and hit send/receive. It {Juno} does it in 1 to 4 minutes, and
>automatically hangs up when all the messages are sent and received.

This is true of most ISP software. AOL has this feature in their own software. We're using Eudora Pro for Email - it has this automatic feature and works with almost any ISP except AOL.

>If the laptop crashes before exiting
>JUNO, I lose the incoming messages.

As far as I can tell, Eudora *never* loses messages, no matter what kind of failure occurs.

>I am trying to get the new SKP calling card to work with JUNO. The old
>one worked, but with the new updated calling card, and the new updated
>JUNO, I have not been able to get them to work together.

One advantage of *not* using Juno is that you can then choose to use a more friendly or more powerful or better documented phone dialer. The dialer built into Windows 95 will do most things of this sort. And if you find some dialing situation it won't handle, you can write a script to do very complex things. And there are many books written on how to use it. If this isn't good enough, you can get a serious telecommunications program like ProComm, which will do everything known to man, and which has an excellent, very detailed, manual. Most ISP's will let you use any software you like for dialing, EMail, Web Browsing, etc. AOL and Juno are weird exceptions which require you to use their own tightly bundled software, like it or not. That's the main reason I dropped AOL.

>I need a phone
>I can really spend time on to figure out how, and on the road, I never
>find a phone I can spend time on. -) Has anyone solved this problem
>yet?

As noted above, we've fairly often found phones where we can spend substantial amounts of time fooling around.

>Another thing, just because you are in an area with a local number, (or
>an 800) phone number, doesn't mean anyone will let you use their phones
>or plug ins to e-mail.

Yes, but it's getting better. In the last two months of travel {ed. note - this was written in July, 1998 - and phone access is even better today}, we've only had to go looking for a phone outside the campground once, and I don't believe that we've ever gone more than three or four days without retrieving EMail. That one time was during a one-week stay at a KOA at Yosemite who refused to let us use their phone. We drove to the nearest small town, stopped at the Visitor's Center, and were directed to a small office supply store in town, who let us use their fax line for a couple of bucks - not a big inconvenience. For the rest of the two months, we've used phones at the (private) campgrounds where we've stayed. The public campgrounds we've stayed at often don't have phones at all. But we never seem to be at such places for more than three days, and then will be staying at a private campground with a phone for a day or two. On two occasions during this two months, we've had a phone hookup at our campsite and could really pig out on Web Surfing. Pointers to modem-friendly places from other RV-Talk folks have helped our on-line life much more pleasant.  {ed. note:  Beginning in 1999, Woodall's and Trailer Life campground directories include notations as to which campgrounds have phones at the site and which offer modem hookups at the office}.

>OH, you can't receive files with JUNO, they print in letters
>that don't say anything. Also, you can't send files with JUNO. Txt mail
>only.