If you are a AT&T customer, either a credit card, cellular or long distance, you can get their service (Worldnet) for $4.95/month. Seems like a good deal.

Earthlink (recently combined with Mindspring) is a decent service. They are not as big but have plenty of POP's (point-of-presence or dial-in numbers).

If national service is not an issue, you may want to look at some of the smaller providers. In my area we have one called Delanet. Inexpensive and local, but not too many users. They recently got gobbled up by a larger companies, but not too bad still. I have switched to cable anyway.

Two additional items; first, CNET also does a review of different ISP's. You can check their web site. Second, don't forget to look at the domain they use. AOL is nice because it is 3 letters (user@aol.com). But netcom uses "user@ix.netcom.com". Not too bad these days, but still not optimal.

You can also check "the list" for info at http://thelist.internet.com. For you cheap guys, here is a list of free isp's that have no banner ad's: http://americanet.go.cc

Some of these services also allow you to purchase a domain and they will host it. So Archie, for example, could purchase the "mrnjchips.com" domain (yes it is available) and have his email be archie@mrnjchips.com. Or, in my case "poppel.com". Anything sent to this domain will get to me. They will charge you approx $30/year for the domain, plus an access charge (for the dial-up service), and maybe a hosting fee (for mail and web).