Selecting an ISP

During my entire programming career I've never had to worry about selecting an ISP because my company always provided that service. I will be retiring in a couple of months and so I will have to find my own ISP for the first time. A new PC that I bought came with 6 months of AOL and so I don't have to worry about it for a while but it's not too early for me to get some information. AOL would be OK, but its one drawback is that I have to use their mail client and while it is OK, I much prefer MS Outlook. Also since I have a DSL line I don't use AOL's broadband service. So I guess I have several questions.

o Are there ISPs which will work with the copy of Outlook that I own?
o What should I expect to pay?
o What services does a good ISP provide?

Coming from Oz i cant realy say for San Jose. aha i'm apoet and i didnt no it. :p

Ok Seriously:

1) Yes most ISP will offer a mail server of some sort whether it be Exchange or sendmail or something else. They will provide you with all the settings for your Outlook Client.

2) I'll leave this to the seppo's.

3) I would say in no particular order:
a) Stable Connection
b) Good tech support - go to there website it'll be a good indication of whether their tech support is good by how many tutorials and faq's they have up there. I.e Settings etc.
c) Fast cost effective Connection
d) A good download limit
e) That when you exceed your limit they dont disconnect you.

I find the smaller companies want your business more and will tend to be a lot more helpful and personal. You wont get the stupid recorded messages for instance. But they are a little more expensive.

hope that helps
b :)

After 8 years of bouncing between ISPs (better deals, ISPs themselves going bust, and other things) one of the things I learnt is *never* trust your ISP with your email.

I've been using GMX for my email across 3 ISPs now, and it's caused so much less mental stress (having my own domain helps, I can just redirect it to another address if GMX ever went strange).