Ah, the 90s. A simpler time. We used our dial up 56k modems to take a slow journey via the information cyberhighway to our favorite X-Files fan pages built on the Angelfire platform. Hot links! Black backgrounds for web pages! AOL chat rooms! And NetZero, a service that offered Internet access for free, provided you didn’t mind being inundated with tons of ads. Well, people did mind and the service went away.

But now it’s back, offering a limited free Internet plan with lots of new restrictions. Instead of ads, says the AP:

The “free” users will be money-losers for the company, United Online Chairman and CEO Mark Goldston said. That means United Online is using the free plan as a way to lure customers with the hope of upselling them to paying plans, which start at $9.95 per month.
To take advantage of the offer, consumers will need to buy a $50 antenna stick that plugs into a laptop, or a $100 “mobile hotspot” that allows any Wi-Fi equipped device to connect to the Internet. United Online will be selling the devices on the NetZero website.

Users will be limited to 200 megabytes a month, which is enough to send a couple emails and look at a few websites. If you go over that amount, you won’t be charged extra but you will be given an opportunity to upgrade to a paid plan or just stop going online for the rest of the month.