Charter Internet service is having the best contest giveaway I’ve seen: win a 2009 Civic Hybrid car worth $24,000! Wooohoo! We need another car, that’s for sure. The specs on this car make my heart go a-flutter:

Polished Metal Metallic
Up to 45 mpg highway
Fabric interior
USB Audio Interface
110-hp, 8 valve, SOHC i-VTEC® 4-cylider engine
Continuously variable transmission
MP3 Auxiliary Input Jack

My Internet service with my current provider is about to expire, next month. I’ve been shopping around because honestly– I don’t think I’ve been getting what I paid for. The service is sooooo slow. I work online all day, and where once I was able to tolerate slow loading times for, say, reading the news– it’s unbearable waiting for pages to load while I work.

I’ve heard rave reviews about Charter service. They offer high speed Internet, telephone, and television service for some great deals. They have a great deal right now, $29.95 a month for 6 months on high speed Internet at speeds up to 5Mbps (that’s almost what I pay right now for my existing service, but am getting only a fraction of the speed!)

Plus, Charter Internet service is “going green” with their hybrid car giveaway. I love hybrids, and I love Hondas. So maybe I’d win! :D Either way, I know I’d win with getting Charter Internet service. See here for contest details.

My Internet ISP charges have been slowing creeping up. We have DSL broadband, and I don’t really know for sure if it is me or not… but our connection just seems to drop every once in a while, and stay disconnected for 1-2 minutes. It especially happens when I drop Entrecards. It is REALLY annoying. Since the costs are going up anyway, I’m looking around.

Anyone have Charter High Speed? I hear they are very good. They have an extremely tempting deal going on right now (I am a real sucker for deals): a Charter Laptop-a-Day Giveaway. If you order their service, you are entered to win 1 of 30 Presario laptops valued at over $600!!! And if you order from them online, you get a $100 Shell gas card for free! See the sweepstakes rules for yourself. Charter has tremendous speeds: there’s the 5Mbps plan, the 10Mbps plan, and the 16Mbps. This is mind-blowing because I get, uh, 700Kbps. Charter is offering their High-Speed service for $19.99 for 6 months. I already pay that for my stinky DSL service!!! :S

Anyway, the free gas card and the computer giveaway looks so good. Check it out if you like.

Oooo you know how I have been bemoaning my Bluehost hosting problems? And my Whip An Orbit web hosting problems (although Whip An Orbit is behaving better now). I had another half-hour outage for all three blogs with Bluehost today. Boy, this is getting old. I’ve only been with them about two months now, and I’ve had a lot of problems.

I’m paying a lot of attention these days to websites discussing hosting sites and hosting information. Here’s a great website on linux web hosting and more. DUH! I wish I’d seen this earlier! It’s called Web Hosting Rating.

Cheap web hosting can be tricky and it definitely takes one with the technical knowledge and experience to be able to judge whether the host is good. More often than not, it is the bad experiences from using cheap web hosting that eventually leads people to lose trust in these low cost endevours and move onto more expensive options, which may not necessarily be better.

“Tricky” is the understatement of the month for me. Bluehost has been tricky. Yeah. [insert angry-face icon here]

Anyway, the site lists three things to look for when choosing a web host. There are some good articles there, too. The information may help you if you are looking for tips. Looks like this blog will be brimming with good ideas to come!