I never used AOL, although I have seen it used by way too many people. My first ISP was Compuserve, which is just as bad.

All I want from an ISP is a decent spec (low latencies, fast transfer rates, no transfer limits), and low cost internet connection. I am perfectly capable of setting up internet explorer, outlook express, mirc, or any of the hundreds of clients which I should be able to choose from. ISPs should adhere to widely accepted standards and specifications. Any OS can support PPP/PPPoE or whatever.

I remember with compuserve, I couldnt set up a handheld to connect, as they forced me to use their own proprietry dialer. I could not access my mailbox via POP3/set up a webmail script/whatever, as I had to use their own crappy proprietory client. The only reason they were able to get away with offering an inferior service is because they were widely known and just as big as AOL at the time.

Their marketting strategy is simply spamming peoples doorsteps with CD after CD of their crap. The average person who wants to try out the 'Internet' doesn't understand anything about open standards, or anything about choosing ISPs, so they go for the one which they happen to have 20 disks from in their bins, or software preinstalled on the computer the purchased from dell/gateway.

Once people have a email address from their ISP, which all their contacts know, once they have set up an established homepage address, even when they realise what a POS the ISP is, they will be reluctant to change ISPs. I was in the same position - changing email addresses would be a disaster, especially as I used it for business and having mail from potential customers bounces wasn't a good idea. I have learned my lesson, if you use an ISP, just use it for intenret access - host email at your own domain, or on reliable free DNS/domain service, same with webhosting.

AOL can brag about their excellent service with built in chat, mail, and censorship. What new internet users do not realise is that all this can be done at no cost through thousands of different software tools. New users believe the 'Internet' is synnonomous with 'AOL'.

Perhaps slightly off topic, but that 'problem' isn't going to be relevant to just AOL. The internet by design is a free and democratic medium for data exchange. Data can be transmitted to any host, it can be encrypted, it can be sent through a proxy with the URL scrambled. It will never be possible to censor the internet beyond very simple and ineffective filters which can be easilly bypassed by anyone with basic knowledge of the internets working - and that's the entire beauty of the internet. That's why attempts by communist governments to set up national filtering firewalls have always failed. 'Protecting' users from freedom of information, and all its 'filth' is no substitute for good education about ethics and morality. And my ethics go strongly against any form of censorship.

I think you sum up my feelings about AOL.

I used Compuserve when it came out ... but now I know better ...

I had AOL two years back, and my internet browser did not work for 6 months! I had to call up AOL every week and only thing they told me was reinstall the AOL adapters, or use the online support which is pretty shitty to me.

Well I had aol for free for about 5 years. They lost my account. I wonder how that happened? No credit card need either. :)

Yea its pretty easy to get around their so called "Protection". Especially websites that are blocked. Just use IE and you can view any web site you want. Or just download another browser.

And if someone blocked IE from going to certain websites then just reset Content Adviser like this:

Just delete:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\
Ratings]

Now you little two year old can browse through porn all day long. Seeing how most users using aol are dumb asses, including the parents. Thats probally all they have done if even that.

And AOL sucks big time. But at the time I had no choice. Finally 3 months later after i got it i got road runner...what a joke..worst that aol..seriously...

Then i used Netzero...yea i paied $10 to use netzero even though i had aol for free. NetZero is a lot better than aol..

Or u could get hooked up with my isp for $10 month and rule the universe. :)

Yip AOL is Crap, Yip Aol is Junk, Yip AOL is garbage, Yip AOL is Spyware, Yip AOL is BS.

I had aol when I first got my pc, I now call it the ISP for completely computer illiterate who just want to brag that they have the web. Most of the people who have it don't know squat. Everyone starts there so it makes a great starter isp, when you get it and learn about the pc you learn that it is crap.

The main things I don't like about it is the security, I would go to sites and get all these popups and then start getting emails from the sites. The cookie control on it was a joke for this reason.. And when I went to cancel the service it took them six months to stop billing me. They finally did when I called and told them if they bill me for one more month I'm going to file a civil suit against them, I'm sure they were scared lol.

To this day I get the stupid CD's and phone calls asking me to go back. I just use the cd's for coasters and tell the people who call that their service is crap and I woud rather not have an ISP than go back to them ..

so in conclusion aol does suxxx !! I hope they crash and burn ..

Aohell will always be crap to me. Bloated sofware not even worth the free time.