we got a Trac phone for my parents about 5 years ago. they only needed it when they went out of the house. now that they are in asst. living they have no need for it so we went to cancel it. I didn't realize that they still had money on their account and actually the people at TracFone told me not to cancel it and said "why don't you just use it up. sent me a new phone and all. I use it when I go out to the river etc since I'm hard on phones.
a few months ago I forgot my regular phone and was on my way to Chicago for a week. Stopped by Best Buy and picked up another Tracfone that was like a BlackBerry. TraccFone swapped out the service and I was go to go in 10 min. For a cell phone company probably the best service I've ever had.
Dave i really haven't had time to play with accessing the internet with the new phone but it looked fairly easy.