One-click Internet access just more marketing hype

One-Click Internet Access Just More Marketing Hype

By Peter Kent

Have you heard the phrase, "one-click Internet access"? When Windows 95 was released last year we heard it a lot. I still hear it now again, from software manufacturers waxing a little too eloquent about their sloppily produced products. The phrase means that you can set up Internet access with a single click of the mouse button.

A single click? How can you do anything with a single click? You can't, of course, but I'll allow a little leeway, a little "poetic license" and say that the term "one-click Internet access," even though it doesn't mean "literally" one click, refers to a simple process that anyone with half a brain or less could carry out.

Unfortunately truth doesn't coincide with marketing hype. I wrote a book about connecting to the Internet with Windows 95, and found that "100 click Internet access" would have been a more appropriate term. Although hooking up to the Internet through Microsoft's own on-line service -- Microsoft Network -- was fairly simple (though far more than just one click), trying to configure their Dial-Up Networking software to work with another service provider was far from easy.

But it's not just Microsoft's products. I've installed scores of Internet-access programs over the last few years, and have run into very few that were quick and easy, and many that were downright complicated. This very evening I wasted several hours trying to connect a Macintosh to the Internet. That's right, a Mac, the machine that can do virtually anything itself, the user being a mere observer, or so we're led to believe.

But the Apple Internet Connection Kit struck me as a rather poorly built little thing. Oh, sure, it's not too bad if you want to connect to one of the four or five service providers who've signed a deal with Apple to provide their services. You just run the registration program, then pick the provider you want to work with. Mind you, I had to set up two accounts, because the process crashed in the middle of setting up the first -- before the program had a chance to configure the dialer software for the service I selected. (I ended up with an account, but no way to connect to it; I'll have to call tomorrow and cancel it.)

Of course, I didn't really want to set up a new account; I wanted to use my existing account. I can set up accounts on Windows machines fairly easily, but for some reason couldn't get the Apple kit to work with the two service providers I tried. I entered all the information requested correctly, of that I'm sure. But this shoddy little program wouldn't even let me watch as the modem tried to connect to the service provider, so I couldn't see what was going wrong. And the documentation was no help -- there was virtually no information about the actual process of setting up an account. The troubleshooting program was worthless, too ("is your modem turned on" was as complicated as it got).

We've seen phenomenal growth in the Internet, but it's going to slow down. One of the reasons is that connecting to the Internet is still a bit of a hassle. A lot of a hassle in many cases. If the Internet wasn't my business, if I didn't know how to get around all these problems, if I was a computing neophyte ... I'd give up and forget about the Internet for now. And I'm sure many people have done just that.

Who has connected to the Internet over the past two or three years? It's people who were already using computers, mostly. Or new computer users, people buying computers for their kids or for their businesses. Few non-computer users decided they just had to have an Internet account and ran out and bought a computer.

But most people still don't use computers, and fewer still have their own computer. And even fewer own a computer with enough power to run the sophisticated Internet programs that everyone wants. (Few recent Internet programs will run on a 286, for instance, and even running Internet software on a 386 can be horribly slow.)

There's so much talk about the Internet, and all the things it will do for us in the future, that we get a little carried away. We forget the basics. In order for the Internet to live up to the hype, it has to have people, a lot of people. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of Americans are Internet users, ranging from the infrequent user to the up-all-night-on-the-Net user. So there's a long way to go.

But the people who have got on-line already were primed and ready to go; computer literate, computer owners, people who liked this technology stuff. Most Americans are not like that, though; they're computer phobic, they don't own a computer, and they're not particularly interested in getting one. So where's the growth going to come from? Well, one answer seems clear to me. Although the Internet may grow very large, it won't grow as quickly as it has over the last couple of years. It just can't.

One-click Internet access is just one reason why it won't. Or rather, lack of one-click Internet access. Until connecting to, and using, the Internet is as easy as turning on a TV, Internet growth will be constrained. Most of the population isn't going to run out and buy a computer so that they can connect to the Internet.

So Internet software has to be cheap, reliable, and probably built into a device that people would buy anyway -- their TVs. And when will that be? Not for a few years yet. It's unlikely that the cable-television companies will be providing affordable, widely available connections to the Internet for five years or so. And that's only one component. True Internet TVs aren't even being manufactured yet, so it will take years for these things to get into most Americans' homes.

The Internet isn't going away; no, I'm not one of those people saying that the Internet is dying, that it was a short-lived gimmick. But growth will slow, and it will be years for all the exaggerated promises about the wonderful things it will do for us to come true. After all, personal computers are 20 years old, and still most people don't have one.

Peter Kent is the co-author of the Official Netscape JavaScript Book (Netscape Press). He can be contacted at geek@topfloor.com.

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