Review of Ilink/2 Internet Dialer

By Derek Clarkson

I've been playing with this little number for the past week and I'm quite impressed. ILink/2 is an alternative dialer to the "Dial other Provider" dialer that IBM provides with the Internet suite in Warp. IBM's dialer works very well, however it does tend to do several things that annoy me, so I've been looking around for an alternative. Firstly you have to go through a number of confirmation dialogs to shut it down, and secondly it takes up too much of my desktop.



ILink/2 on the other hand has been written with people like me in mind. The first thing that I noticed was that it does not need to be loaded with your internet connection information. ILink/2 is designed to scan for a locate the configuration file of IBM's dialer, then it reads in all the settings you already use. Thus configuring the dialer portion of ILink/2 is as simple as starting the program.

Nexst thing I liked about it is that there are two displays modes, Condensed and full sized. Condensed is about a 1/3 the size of IBM's dialer and full size is about 2/3rds. I like the condensed mode as it can site quietly in the corner of my screen without taking up too much space. And speaking of space-saving, when ILink/2 makes a connection to your service provider it automatically hides itself to give you back the screen space.

Another thing that I like is that it has some little connection meters which pop up when that connection is made. They cover CPS, Bytes transmitted and Time online. Being quite small you can have then at the bottom of your screen to help you keep track of what is going on. In addition these meters and the main window also remember their position on the screen from session to session, thus position them once and forget.

ILink/2 also has extensive redial and attack dial features, one of the best being the ability to redial if your connection is lost.

ILink/2 has two other features which I consider to be worth buying it for. If you close it from the Window list, it will shutdown without displaying any annoying confirmation screens. Further, it also closes down faster than IBM's. Secondly, ILink/2 has an autostart feature where it will automatically launch any number of OS?2 programs when the connection is made. Thus you can have your mail, FTP, Web Browsers and others kicked off by this dialer.

Pros and Cons
Plenty of Pros with this little number, it's very good and stable. As far as cons go ... about the only thing I can think of is ... nah! can't really think of one at all.

Summary
I think ILink/2 is a wicked dialer, it's quick, easy to use, and works the way I like.