You know, a lot of cable companies are now offering a cheaper service for $25, that, while not as fast as their regular service, is still over twice as fast as dialup.
Seems like a good move for fed-up AOLers who don’t want to spend $50/month for cable, but want faster access.
If AOL were banned, much of our solid waste disposal problem would vanish.
I think I’ve thrown out at least a dozen junk mail AOL disks in the last few years.
I won’t give you step-by-step instructions here (I’m on Mac OS X right now) but it’s not hard at all. I followed the step-by-step instructions in the Mindspring Handbook (back when Mindspring was really Mindspring) and set up Dial-up Networking myself. And this was when I’d had a computer—what? maybe all of 3 months? You CAN do it. It just requires following instructions (“click here, choose this in the drop down menu, put these numbers in the boxes…”). And writing them down, so you can follow them again later.
However, in your case, with access number woes, I can fully see why you’d prefer AOL. I’d probably do the same thing if I were in your shoes. But for the most part, AOL sucks. SUCKS so bad. I had to reinstall all the system software on my Mac because AOL screwed it up. And it’s hard on my PCs too. Only one (old and crappy) PC laptop “liked” AOL. Same goes for an old crappy Mac—it “liked” AOL, but none of my other (newer, faster) Macs liked AOL at all. The software is too buggy and iffy.
And don’t even get me started on how they tout “special features” and act as if THEY are the only ones to offer them. I can’t forget the ad campaign “Get WebMD!”. Come ON. Just go to webmd.com, folks. ANYONE can get the information there! Sheesh! But the AOL ads gave the strong impression that WebMD was some “special” feature that only they could provide.
Hah. I love cable modem access.
And his name is Fred.
I used to “volunteer” in one (then another, then another) AOL forum, which let me in on some of the backstage dreck that AOL was hiding from the rest of the world. When AOL released a version of its Mac software a number of Mac users and I complained bitterly about how they stirpped out a number of features which were either a) highly useful to us as “volunteers” and b) just neat in general. We were told in no uncertain terms that Fred wouldn’t ever use these features and so out they went. Fred is in his mid 40s and uses AOL primarily to communicate with his kids at college and maybe to look up some sports scores or stock quotes. Fred doesn’t use bells and whistles features. Fred doesn’t spend hours online chatting. Fred gets on, does his email and sports scores and gets off.
So there you have AOL’s business model of the mid 1990s. Fred.
I use a local ISP-stargate-and I love it. Hell, I can’t stand having AIM on our computer, but my sister wanted it.
DDG, I feel for you-hopefully, someday soon, you’ll have better options.
Duck Duck Goose, I had a local dial-up account for 2 years - I can only remember it going down once, for 2 hours, the whole two years I had it. Like others have said, setting up a DUN is easy - I am 100% positive that you, Duck Duck Goose, could do it. The local dial-up was cheap, something like $15.95 a month for unlimited access (and I was on quite a bit, sometimes connected for 24 hours a day).
My brother and his family are way out in the boondocks - I mean waaaaayyy out, and they are using something called USfamily.net for $9.95 a month - not sure about the access numbers, but I am fairly sure they have a local one.
AOL isn’t the only one that does this. I just got a very enthusiatic email from AT&T telling me that AT&T’s search page is “NOW POWERED BY GOOGLE!” along with a link to said page, which is at least twice as long as “www.google.com”.
WOOHOO!
Haven’t laughed that hard in a while…
I use a Mom-and-Pop ISP for $12 a month, and haven’t had a busy signal in about 3 years.
AOL broke my computer. I called the techs; they were not the “Nicest, kindest, most patient people I know.” I think they were biased in India, mostly because all four of the techs I talked to had unintelligible Indian accents and the hold music featured heavy sitar. They did not help. At all. After a few days talking to Microsoft and Compaq techs, it still was not fixable. I had to re-load Windows. I hate AOL. And Microsoft. And Compaq. EEh.
WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH!!!
Actually if you use a credit card AOL is 19.95
bringing your own access is 12.95 i.e. TCP/IP
What gets expensive is when you use the non credit card billing that’s 24.95
And as someone who had MSN and ran AOL off of it dial up MSN is just as bad as AOL quality wise and to use MSN features sometimes you had to install separate programs …
Only thing I preferred over AOL really was when you made a char room you had IRC style controls …
But yes AOL is for the lowest common denominator and non tech people I’ve heard "its easy to use its there And i don’t have to be bothered wlth any thing technical or hard "
Note the cc price of aol might have went up also …
I used AOL when it first came out. It helped me learn how to navigate on the internet. And years ago it really did have quite a lot of neat internal sites: the travel boards, Straight Dope, an awesome book club community, etc. Once those internal sites began to disappear, I had no reason to keep AOL because I was using it basically as a platform to get to the internet.
However, there are still people like my mom who are literally afraid to type in a command for fear it will blow up her p.c. AOL appeals to people like her.
She doesn’t have AOL because her computer doesn’t have a modem (I know, I know). But if she were to have AOL, and she wanted to pay $20 a month to feel more comfortable about retrieving e-mail or booking flights, that would be okay.
AOL is the ISP equivalent of those publishers who sell overpriced magazines and CD-ROMs to new PC owners, with step-by-step instructions on how to type out a letter in Word, or how to send an email. There’s nothing wrong with targeting concerned novices per se, but I do share Milossarian’s concern that it’s extorting money based on smoke and mirrors; promising to make web use easy, family-friendly and straightforward when it’s possible for any half-intelligent person to do that more cheaply. The UK TV adverts sometimes seem to imply that AOL is the web, or at least the reputable, trustworthy part of it, and that ‘not AOL’ is therefore the seedy, dangerous badlands of the internet.
Oh, hell. AOL is the Internet for Dummies.
nightshade, it’s actually $14.95, at least it is here.
And where are you that monthly charges are only $19.95? I haven’t seen it for that little since 1998–and I do pay with a credit card.
BTW, I am AOL-free, as documented here. And believe me, getting them to accept that I actually was cancelling was a chore.
Tip: If you ever want free AOL, tell them you want to cancel. It seems to be protocol to offer 3 free months to try to win you over.
“So, how do I look up books from home?”
“Do you have internet access?”
“No, but we have AOL.”
“Okay. Well, go to our website, which is dub-dub-dub-dot-cincinnatilibrary-dot-O-R-G, and click on the link that says ‘Library Catalog’.”
“What’s your keyword?”
“We don’t have a keyword. Our address is dub-dub…”
“How do I get to your website if you don’t have a keyword???”
“Just enter the address directly.”
“???” :drools:
“Oh hell. Just do a search on Cincinnati Public Library.”
grrrr…
Here’s another way you can get rid of your unwanted AOL disks:
