A note about saving passwords. According to the List of Things You Shouldn't Do, writing down passwords or saving them like I have in the above picture is a stupid course of action to take. The rationale is that, if somebody gets access to your computer or goes through your stuff, they might well obtain access to your computer accounts. This is inarguably true, so here's my rationale for saving passwords anyway. If somebody has gained access to my computer or is going through my stuff, that means they've broken into my house, and at that point, I don't particularly care about my computer accounts. Besides, I'm extremely lazy, and if you do save your password, you won't have to re-enter it every time you login to Zipcon. (Just remember to change your password here if you ever change it on Zipcon.... something that's a good thing to do every couple months regardless of how pragmatic you are.)

Well, now that that little discourse is over with, let's finish configuring PPP. Click on the Options button, and then on the Connection tab. Here's how I have mine set up:

The first check box, to connect automatically when starting TCP/IP applications, is a good idea to check. What it means is that, if you start up your Web browser and you're not connected to the Internet at the moment, your computer will automatically dial Zipcon and connect.

Verbose logging is useless unless you're trying to debug a connection; leaving it off gives you a much less detailed, much longer (time-wise) log file of connections.

Set your reminders however you wish; personally, I spend way too much time online every day, so being asked every 5 minutes to maintain my connection would heartily annoy me in the first 5 minutes. Also keep in mind that Zipcon already disconnects you if you're idle for much more than 20 minutes, so the 10 minute idle timeout seems redundant and (for me) too short a time anyway.

Next, click on the Protocol tab. Things should already look like they do below, but in case they don't, go ahead and change them.