My parents have an account with MSN for Internet service. Being
parents, they're confused by the multitude of things it does when you
try to connect: forcing them to use the proprietary sign-in screen,
popping up MSN Messenger, starting MSN Explorer or whatever they call
that weird AOL-type browser monstrosity.

I'd like to keep it simple for them by just creating an entry for MSN
in Dial-Up Networking (they're running Win98 SE) and having them use
that. Unfortunately, my attempts at finding a working user name and
password have failed. Granted, these attempts were basically just
trying their e-mail name (minus @msn.com, of course) as the user name,
but I can't think of anything else.

This question also extends to e-mail. Instead of using the ridiculous
pseudo-Hotmail interface for e-mail, I'd like them to be able to use
their own client to keep it simple. But again, I can't figure out what
user name should be used, not to mention that MSN's lips are sealed
about POP3 and SMTP server names.

Anyway, I think you get the gist of my problem. Any information on
these matters would be appreciated.