Eh? Oh, hell!
Written: Jun 15 '01
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Pros: I got connected
Cons: Slow, screwed up my other settings, switched color pallettes
The Bottom Line: If you absolutely have to get online fast or ar an absolute newbie, otherwise steer clear.
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| T.Rob's Full Review: AOL (America Online) |
Recently while travelling my laptop lost it's connection to the office. Needing an emergency dial-up provider I went to the local CompUSA and obtained a free trial disc. Due to a recent agreement between CompUSA and AOL, the only disc they had was for AOL. I had no choice. I got it.
Why I was predisposed against AOL
I've been on the Internet since the days when it was best known for UseNet News and email. There was a code among the users and everyone knew it and lived by it. It was a community. Then one day AOL opened up it's Internet gateway and unleashed the uncivilized, rude horde upon the net. Soon, favorite newsgroups near the alphabetical top (alt.best.of.internet for example) became overrun and useless as legions of AOL users moved in and made the place their own. Their war cry was "nobody owns the Internet and you can't make me post on-topic!" Within a month, AOL was the most hated domain on the Internet and AOL email address still carry a stigma.
Later came AOL Instant Messanger or "AIM". I never wanted anything to do with AOL so whenever I installed a new version of Netscape, I always chose NOT to install AIM. But always a week later, there it would be in my tray whenever I rebooted. It never showed up in the registry during the "incubation period" but sure enough, there it would be in the tray a week later. I hate it when software developers think they can mess with your PC without your permission or knowledge.
So why did I get AOL?
Simple, I had no choice. It was either AOL or pay a local ISP for setup and usage fees for 5 days. Did that mean I can't be objective? Not at all. I program computers and manage a network for a living. After hours I manage a web site and the digital archives for a syndicated radio show. If AOL had something to offer, I would find out. If It was more trouble than it is worth, I'd find that out too.
I take it, AOL didn't work out
That would be correct. I was able to get connected but the first thing I noticed was that the phone list had several options but no way to tell ahead of time what the surcharge, if any, would be. The software dialed up an 800 number to get the latest phone list so why can't they tell you which numbers carry a surcharge? Beats me.
The next thing I noticed was that they really want you to stay within the AOL world so they can spit ads at you. What I really wanted to do was minimize the AOL browser so I could use my own browser with all it's bookmarks. Problem was that the AOL browser switches the color pallette. Stay in the AOL browser and, everything is fine. When I switched to another application, all my colors went awry. This particular laptop is a Toshiba Tecra running NT with Netscape and IE browsers. Neither browser would display correct colors more than about 10% of the time while the AOL browser was running. Furthermore, once the color pallettes were disturbed, switching back to AOL did not restore them. Shutting down AOL was the only way to fix the problem.
Dial-up response was fair at best. when I reviewed my hotel phone bill, I saw that about 25% of the calls were failed connections.
Finally, when I got home I tried to hook my PC back up to the network. My company dial-up had been set up using standard RAS to allow the browser to detect network settings and bind to the network adapter when available, fall back to the dial-up otherwise. The AOL software modified this setting to ALWAYS use the dial-up adapter. When I switched it back, starting the browser STILL caused the PC to attempt to dial, even though I could ping sites on the Internet and clearly had connectivity through my cable modem!
Other, less obvious, stuff.
There are many sites which do not work with AOL or have special instructions for AOL. This is because AOL stores many popular web pages in a local cache to save the bandwidth of reloading them for each user request. For many services which use dynamically built pages, this model just doesn't work.
One of my web mail accounts just outright blocked me if I tried to log on through AOL. When I called their support line, I was told that this was due to the high number of spammers that originate from AOL accounts. Great. This webmail account was the only way I could respond to users of the radio show's web site and I couldn't use it because AOL was my provider.
Strangely, AIM never popped up or showed up in my registry. Apparently if you have AOL, they don't enforce installation of AIM like they did with Netscape. Go figure.
Finally, when I called to cancel the service the rep gave me a hard time about it. "Let me put a tech on the phone" she said.
"No, I am objecting to the fact that it messed with my network settings in the first place. I don't want to be walked through trying to make it work like it should have when I installed it."
"Well, the tech can probably address that issue."
"What part of "NO" didn't you understand?"
"Well, we fix problems like this all the time."
"That means you have problems like this all the time, right?"
And on and on, and on. It took 15 minutes to get a confirmation number for the cancellation.
Conclusions
AOL got me connected. That's it. I found no reasons to change my opinion of the service. If you have a bunch of friends unlucky enough to be on AOL and you want to chat with them, get AIM and ANY other provider. If you want to use some of the AOL content, try the "bring your own provider" option that allows you to use your own ISP and tunnel back into AOL over the Internet. Other than that, run! Run like your online life depended on it!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): Free trial
Version Number or Year: 7.0
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Epinions.com ID:
T.Rob
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Member: T.Rob
Location: Charlotte, NC
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 32 members
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