Cheap Linux-Friendly Dialup in Phoenix?

[vodhner at cox.net]

Well, Cox has bumped their low-end access from about $24 to more like $30 monthly, blowing my friend's disability-check budget.

He mentioned NetZero but I think they require a special Windows client -- and I know that such clients claim to boost effective connection speed with added compression and caching features.

So if I'm trying to keep him running on Linux, what's his best bet?  I'd like to keep his bill no higher than about $20 for connect + mailbox.  Performance features would be nice, but keeping him off Windows -- priceless!

Thanks in advance for any advice.  See P.S. below regarding his setup.

Vic

P.S. -- I've dual-booted his XP doorstop with Feather Linux.  I was interested to see that XP Pro works OK on a Pentium II with 130 MB of memory (taking 2:50 to boot up) but Ubuntu, Linspire and a bunch of others did not manage to come up effectively.  I was real happy with Feather Linux, a Slax derivitive:  came up clean, detected everything, and runs real snappy.