Say goodbye to Earthlink

Earth­link costs about $22 per month. For that, I get sev­eral e-mail addresses that I actu­ally use, pretty effec­tive spam block­ing that I actu­ally use, and nation­wide local access dial-up num­bers that I almost never use. Prob­lem is, I get those same ser­vices “free” with other stuff now. My domain host­ing­com­pany gives me e-mail, and the Mac OS gives me spam filtering.

I’m happy to give up the e-mail addresses and the spam-blocking. Amus­ingly enough, the part I worry about ditch­ing is the nation­wide local access. What if we’re on vaca­tion and we need a local num­ber? What if we’re on a busi­ness trip and want to check e-mail? I think Tiffany’s actu­ally used this once or twice while we were on vaca­tion in Florida. But she says she can prob­a­bly get along with­out it, and so many hotels now offer Inter­net access in the room anyway.

It has been a good run, I think I’ve been an Earth­link mem­ber for at least five or six years now. That’s a long time on the Inter­net. Will I regret it? Maybe. But change is good.