In keeping with its stated aim of being a family provider the newsgroups are heavily censored no alt

In keeping with its stated aim of being a family provider, the newsgroups are heavily censored (no alt.sex groups then). And there are also prominent reminders that “bad language or sexually explicit remarks may lose you your account”.UK Online’s own research shows that 93 per cent of parents want some kind of parental control over what their children find on the Net, and with the number of home computers at 4 million and rising, it makes commercial sense to give parents what they want. If you want to log a child on under a different surname, you need to e- mail admin to make the arrangements!UK Online is a compromise between being an online service in the tradition of CompuServe, running individual clubs on everything from travel to rock within the UK Online service, and being an Internet provider, allowing access to the wider world of the Web and newsgroups. Mind you, you can only add family members with the same surname – not good in this age of post-nuclear families. At which point it was suggested, gently, that although UK Online was intended to operate with 14.4 modems, my 14.4 modem might be too slow. Gritting my teeth, I bought a new 28.8 modem, reloaded the latest version of the software – and everything worked perfectly.So, as a family, what did we eventually get with our connection to UK Online? Well, pounds 14.99 a month gives you family membership of the Web- based online service, unlimited access to the Net, and four e-mail addresses, so your kids can become cyberbrats with their own net address and their own password-protected “start-up” pages.

I almost gave up on UK Online – which bills itself as the family online provider and is one of the UK’s more recent entries to the world of the Internet I’m glad I didn’t, but it was close. Maybe it was because I started out with a not-quite finished beta copy of the software that it knocked out all my other Net services and refused to let me log on to all its much-trumpeted “discussion clubs”. CompuServe and UK On-Line were operating nodes at speeds of 9.600bps and lower, which makes download time painfully slow. Subscription pounds 5.99 a month, including two hours’ use a month, then pounds 3.25 an hour Price likely to fall soon..

Microsoft is also keen to develop less- intrusive online ads, and to take a percentage from commercial transactions.MSN 0345 002000. “You can’t demand membership – and you can only provide it if you’re offering demonstrable value to the user,” she says. An aggressive promotional push will see member-only portions becoming publicly accessible. The “club” and the Internet portions will also be uncoupled, allowing users with an existing Internet account to become MSN members at a reduced price.