If you access the net through a phone line, you may find this program useful. Easy2Dial is a small tool that lets you dial up your ISP and hold a connection to it. It has quite a few great features and is an excellent substitute to the built-in Windows dial-up tool.
     Easy2Dial allows you to store options for several ISPs and switch between them very easily. There is a built-in scheduler, which you can use to connect to, say, an ISP with cheap rates for nightly downloads. For those who want to know how much they spend on surfing the net, there's a statistics page with a costs calculation window.
     The options page impresses one with lots of preferences available: from a common 'reconnect if disconnection detected' to 'reconnect if connection speed is less than a certain number'. But the most impressive feature is a tiny indicator window which shows you if you're online or offline, and the time spent online. The window has a transparent background and no borders, so you can put it anywhere on the screen. Download this program today and let Easy2Dial take care of dialing your local ISP.