Does AOL really do this?

A frie^H^H^H^Haquaintance of mine uses AOL. He just signed up to a mailing list I’m on. Then he posted a message:

EVERBODY STOP TALKING TO ME!!! I’M BUSY RIGHT NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

I sent him an email explaining the concept of a mailing list, and that he doesn’t have to read each email as he receives it.

Or does he? I suppose it does play that silly “You’ve got mail” thing for each message, but can’t he turn that off when he doesn’t want to be disturbed?

It does play that wav each time an e-mail is received, but if it really bothers him he could either delete the wav or move it to a non-aol folder when he doesn’t want to hear it.

You can turn off the ‘You’ve got mail!’ message by taking the wav file out of the directory where AOL searches for it. I think there’s a preference where you can change/turn it off, too. And, it only says it when you sign on or get a new mail after having no other new mail. If you already have new mail you haven’t checked, it won’t say it.

I believe you can also control that using the Control Panel/Sounds program; I think AOL registers its sounds there and you can turn it off or even select a different wav, withouth having to physically copy files around.

Geez people…no it doesn’t.

It only does the “You’ve got mail” if your mail box is empty. You keep one there…it doesn’t say it. And yes I do use AOL.

Most mailing lists these days have a per-person option to group an entire day’s traffic into one message. Yahoo Groups in particular does. You ought to tell your friend to look for that.

AOL plays the mail wav when you get email and there were no unread messages in your inbox. If you already have an unread message, more mail won’t trigger the wav. (The flag on the mailbox icon on the “welcome” panel stays up, of course, indicating unread mail.)

One solution could be to tell this person that he/she doesn’t have to read the mail immediately. The digest idea is a good one, too.